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THOMAS J. GARGAN 

31 jmonorial 

WITH AN APPENDIX CONTAINING ADDRESSES 

DELIVERED BY HIM ON VARIOUS 

OCCASIONS 



BOSTON 
GEO. H. ELLIS CO., PRINTERS, 272 CONGRESS ST. 

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THOMAS J. GARGAN, 



Born in Boston, Mass., 27th October, 1844. 
Died in Berlin, Germany, 31st July, 1908. 



They laid him down, under the cool, gray sod, 
Under the grass, under the stars and skies, 
At peace with all the world, at rest with God, 
The hush and calm of death upon his eyes. 
The sprays and garlands strewn o'er him may fade; 
But yet the noble, tender deeds unseen — 
The open hand, with all its gifts unweighed — 
Will bloom and keep his kindly mem'ry green. 

O loyal friend, how often in our need 

In days to come, with youth and hope outworn, 

We'll miss the tongue that eloquent could plead 

For truth and right; those dear, dead graces mourn,- 

The gentle smile, the sweetly mellow voice, 

The courage firm, the honor unassailed, 

The counsel wise that guided men to choice, 

The friendship firm and true that never failed! 

He sleeps with them, the comrades of his youth, 
With those he loved when all the world was young; 
With those brave hearts, who battled for the truth, 
Stirring the world with songs for freedom sung. 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Sleep on! Sleep sweet! A nobler day begins, 
Whose light ne'er knows a shadow of this earth. 
The tomb is but a shrouding for our sins, 
The grave the cradle of a nobler birth. 

Sleep on in this, the City of the Dead, 
Where healing peace and rest eternal reign; 
The grass that waves above your narrow bed 
Grows o'er a home that knows no earthly pain. 
The tender heart is still, the voice is mute, 
The soul has winged its way to heights serene. 
We who remain, an honored name salute, 
And hon'ring seek to keep its mem'ry green. 



Joseph Smith. 



This little volume is dedicated to the memory of a 
husband loved in life and mourned in death, and is 
published that some record of an honorable career and a 
pure life may be given to a community that was better 
for his labor and sweeter for his influence. 

Helena Nordhoff Gargan. 



FOREWORD. 

The purpose of this little monograph is 
not so much to write a biography of Thomas J. 
Gargan as to leave some record of the manner 
of man he was. The late Thomas J. Gargan 
was not, in its broad sense and in the common 
acceptation of the term, a great man : his name 
is not connected with any great affair of State 
nor with any historic measure of legislation. 
He led no armies afield nor navies afloat. 
Though his reputation was local, his spirit was 
not parochial: he was neither obscure nor 
mediocre. The son of an immigrant in a com- 
munity that receives the stranger with cau- 
tion, if not with suspicion, he came into the 
world with no advantages of wealth, prestige, 
or privilege: the measure of success he achieved 
in life he owed to native ability, personal 
worth, a courage that heartened him to prefer 
right and justice to popularity and applause, 
and a home in which religion was reverenced, 
morality inculcated, and the old - fashioned 
virtues of honesty, industry, duty, loyalty, and 
respect for humanity were taught. He was an 
influence for good all the days of his life and 
work: he wronged no man knowingly; he 
aided and lifted up many men wittingly; his 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



activity in the community was always whole- 
some; and he preferred to be right with the 
few rather than wrong with the many. 

The writer of these pages must necessarily 
be discursive. He knew the man who was his 
friend, and every man's friend, intimately for 
years; he knew his ideals and hopes, and was 
familiar with his standards of life and living; 
he had listened to the expression of his opinions 
and the declaration of his principles; and 
his affection for his dead friend was coupled 
with a deep respect and admiration for his 
character. 

Great men make great impressions on the 
world and history for good or evil: the good 
man radiates moral strength and wholesome 
influences in his own community; and it is a 
question for each man to answer for himself 
whether he who fills the earth with the clamor 
of the trump of fame is more useful to human- 
ity than he who fills the heart of his neighbor 
with love and his home with peace. Gentle 
and just, he was devoid of dogmatism and pride 
of opinion. Combating injustice, cruelty, and 
intolerance, he refused to use their weapons 
in his fights, believing that truth was invin- 
cible and wit and humor unanswerable. He 
preferred to conquer by convincing, to obtain 
conversion by kindness; and humbug, pr.e- 



8 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



tension, and pharisaism he met with good- 
humored contempt. 

I have deemed it better, therefore, to let his 
own acts and utterances, his own beliefs and 
opinions, speak for a man who was honored and 
respected in life and sincerely mourned in 
death. 

In seeking to tell something of this man, who 
was as destitute of malice and meanness as 
ordinary human kind may be, it becomes neces- 
sary to speak of evils and issues that are hap- 
pily dead, of intolerances and misconceptions 
which were the ill-begotten offspring of con- 
ditions that have passed. Their restatement 
can do no harm now: they serve simply to 
illustrate the character of the dead man, and 
to make the sane and honorable among the 
living resolve that they shall afflict us no more. 

All that is mortal of Thomas J. Gargan has 
been under the sod long enough now to get a 
measurably true perspective of him. He is 
still remembered. He had his weaknesses and 
blemishes without doubt, for he was human; 
but I do not know what they were, or, knowing 
them, would not set them down, for my friend 
can do no wrong. The good that men do lives 
after them: the evil perishes with them. 



Joseph Smith. 



THOMAS J. GARGAN. 

At rest forever in Holyhood Cemetery, sleep- 
ing their last sleep, are four men who in life 
were friends and compatriots, comrades and 
co-workers; men whose character and achieve- 
ment made them honored and respected in the 
flesh; men whose conduct and action were in- 
spired by the principles of honor and justice, 
loyalty and religion; men whose souls were 
inflamed by a love and devotion for the things 
they believed would make the race better and 
the world sweeter; men who could always be 
depended upon to stand up and be counted 
whenever and wherever the rights of men — 
native or alien, black or white, at home or 
abroad — were assailed or jeopardized by power 
or greed, or pride or privilege. 

These four men were John Boyle O'Reilly, 
Patrick A. Collins, James Jeffrey Roche, and 
Thomas J. Gargan. They passed from life in 
the order of their naming. Each in his day 
and in the measure of his talents contributed 
his gifts to Boston and America; each lived 
and worked and died with clean hands; each 
passed with clean soul to his last accounting, 
leaving but meagre fortune to his heirs, but 

ii 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



giving to kin and country the legacy of an un- 
spotted name, a reputation above reproach, 
and a memory that smells sweet and blossoms 
in the dust. In an age which seems lightly in- 
different to the things that are more excellent 
and wedded to materialism and greed, only the 
big of heart and strong of soul seem to give 
consideration to those intangible and spiritual 
things that are imperishable. 

O'Reilly and Roche were poets and writers. 
The printed word, when forged in the flame 
of truth and fashioned by the hand of genius, 
will live to stir and strengthen generations yet 
unborn; yet in that day which always comes 
when the world knows little of the daily life 
of the writer and singer, of his joys and sorrows, 
of his trials and triumphs, and when he is at 
best merely a name, the printed word will 
endure. 

Collins and Gargan were lawyers and orators. 
The spoken word may touch the conscience, 
rouse the soul, and fire the heart of a nation; 
yet, except to the generation which heard him, 
it gives no clew to the fire and fervor of the 
orator. The orator's message is written in 
water; his name and fame are too often fated 
to be transitory. Even if the spoken word be 
crystallized in type, we miss the elements that 
made it potential and compelling. The fire, 

12 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the gesture, the gleaming eye, the tense face, 
the many-toned gamut of the voice, the master- 
ful soul that roused the emotions and controlled 
the minds of those who listened, — these are 
gone: only the pale and ghostly word remains, 
the flame and fire gone with the living tongue 
that sent it forth winged like an arrow and burn- 
ing like a brand. 

The romantic and poignant life of O'Reilly 
was written con amore by his friend and co- 
laborer Roche; his splendid verse and stirring 
addresses are in type. A modest mono- 
graph of Roche was written by one of his 
friends; his songs and satires are on the li- 
brary shelves; and a sympathetic biography 
of Collins has been given to the world. Alone 
of this remarkable quartet no record of the life 
and work and deliverances of Thomas J. Gar- 
gan has been written; yet his memory still 
lingers in the city of his birth and home like a 
sweet essence, for he was a man whose compan- 
ionship and charm, whose gifts and utterances, 
are not soon forgotten. 

"His life was gentle, and the elements 
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, 'This was a man!'" 

All four were men of the Irish race, endowed 
with the courage and conscience of the Kelt, 



13 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



and gifted with that imagination which is the 
vision of the soul, — a vision which enabled them 
to see beyond the sordid surroundings of their 
day and place into a future when the asperities 
and meannesses, the contumely and prejudice, 
of the present would be dead and perhaps for- 
gotten, when the genius of their race would be 
acclaimed and the gifts and graces it had 
brought to the human amalgam we call the 
American would be recognized. 

Thomas J. Gargan loved all men, but there 
were a pride and tenderness he brought to the 
affection he gave his own people that were as 
touching as inspiring. He never lost faith 
in his race; he knew its strength and weakness; 
its triumphs, trials, and tragedies were written 
in his heart; and his enthusiasms burned and 
glowed as fervidly in the autumn of his years 
as in the springtime. He knew and taught that 
the genius of a race never perishes, its divine 
gifts never die. Wars, persecutions, famines, 
the overlordship of duller and ruder peoples, 
and the scattering of the winds of wrath and 
wickedness may afflict the race; the gifts and 
graces that made it useful and necessary to the 
world are never destroyed; they may be over- 
whelmed, but, as the fallow and neglected 
fields wait only the hour when toil and tillage 
and sunshine and sanity shall call them back 

H 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



once more to fatness and fertility and flower 
and fruitage, so the buried gifts and neglected 
graces of a race which once made it great and 
glorious must inevitably come forth in better 
days, under kindlier skies, to sweeten the 
earth and strengthen humanity. It was the 
doctrine of the optimist, of the philosopher who 
had faith in God and man. 

Thomas J. Gargan was essentially a Kelt: 
he had the warmth, kindliness, generosity, 
enthusiasm, imagination, spirituality, loyalty 
to ideals, fidelity to noble traditions, courage 
and tenacity under trials and stress, and that 
invincible optimism which is based on unques- 
tioning faith in God and the intrinsic good in 
man; but he also had the Keltic sense of psy- 
chologic values. He understood how much 
dross was mixed with the good of human nat- 
ure; he was a keen judge of men; and, while 
the Keltic brain would not permit him to place 
a fictitious value on the strength and achieve- 
ment of any man, his Keltic heart was charged 
with a pity that went out to the frailties and 
failures of all men. 

He was born in Boston, October 27, 1844, m 
a city and an environment essentially suspi- 
cious of and antipathetic to his race, and among 
a population which had inherited all the bigot- 
ries of a cult and preserved all the prejudices 

15 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of a clan which had striven furiously and fu- 
tilely in the past to exterminate the Irish under 
Irish skies. 

His grandfather was one of the victims of 
that ill-starred peasant revolt, the Rebellion 
of '98, — a crime planned with cold-blooded 
deliberation by those master scoundrels of 
Irish history, Camden and Castlereagh, who, 
by outrages, billetings, and acts that made the 
world shudder, goaded the unarmed peasantry 
to revolt, that the shameful political union of 
Ireland and England might be consummated 
under the smoke and clash of civil war. The 
elder Gargan suffered in common with his 
countrymen, and went out to face his torturers 
in the field, only to be defeated and captured, 
his little estate confiscated to the Crown, and 
to die with the bitterness of defeat in his heart, 
by the roadside on the way to the Drogheda 
prison, from the ill-treatment and tortures 
inflicted on him by a brutal soldiery. His 
little child, Patrick Gargan, was taken home by 
his brother, who cared for him and brought 
him to manhood; and, while yet a young man, 
in 1824 he left the land of his fathers and 
emigrated to Boston. There he met and mar- 
ried Rose Garland, by whom he had eight 
children, Thomas J. Gargan being the oldest 
of the boys. 

16 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Patrick Gargan was a man of sunny tempera- 
ment, an omnivorous reader of books, and a 
lover of learning, as are most of his race. He 
never forgot the terrible tragedy of his father's 
end, nor the aftermath of lawless cruelty and 
injustice that followed the '98. He told the 
story to his children, and it may be truthfully 
said that Thomas J. Gargan drank in with his 
mother's milk that hatred of wrong, injustice, 
cruelty, and persecution that he manifested all 
his life. 

The '98 and its memories were stamped 
indelibly on the soul of Patrick Gargan. The 
recollection of what his own people and kin had 
suffered made him tender and pitiful toward all 
the weak and oppressed of earth; and he hated 
most cordially the system of negro slavery 
then flourishing in the South under the sanction 
of law, and tolerated, if not approved, by the 
"conservative" classes of the North, who dep- 
recated the "radicalism" of the anti-slavery 
agitation as calculated to disturb business and 
offend their good customers in the Slave States. 
Garrison and Phillips might have been more 
outspoken and effective in their denunciation 
of and war on slavery than the humble emi- 
grant Patrick Gargan, but they were never more 
sincere in their hatred of the institution or 
more earnest and active in giving practical aid 



17 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



to its victims. His house was one of the sta- 
tions on the underground road to freedom. 
The spacious attic in his home was often used 
as a harborage for fugitive slaves, who were 
fed and cared for, safe from the clutches of the 
sheriff and his officers, until they could be 
passed along to liberty, security, and safety. 

Thomas J. Gargan never forgot and often 
spoke of the day when, a little lad, playing 
hide-and-seek with his brothers and sisters, he 
scaled the stairs to find that mysterious and 
sealed attic, from which they were forbidden, 
open by some oversight. Curiosity made him 
forget parental authority, and he entered the 
room only to stop with his trembling little heart 
in his mouth, for there in the obscurity sat a 
black man, a hunted fugitive slave, — a start- 
ling vision for a child who had never seen a 
negro at close range, for the prudent father 
kept the children in ignorance of the presence 
of these hapless outlaws, not daring to imperil 
their safety and freedom by the babbling tongue 
of thoughtless childhood. The black man took 
the trembling boy upon his knee, allayed his 
fears, and engaged his sympathies by his story, 
and told him his good father would take him 
away and pilot him to safety at midnight. 
This dramatic incident he never forgot. It 
was a tremendous event in the boy's life, and 

18 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



one that had its influence in forming the 
character and coloring the action of the man and 
his work; and it made him feel that even he 
was a factor in the gathering storm which was 
to wipe out slavery and its abominations. 

Boston was a small place in the forties. The 
new-comers clustered together at the North 
End. The Gargans lived on the sunny side of 
a sunny street, and the boy Thomas J. Gargan 
garnered all the sunshine of the street into his 
heart and kept it there all his days. He was 
educated in the Boston public schools, and was 
a Franklin Medal scholar. His moral and re- 
ligious training was gained in the Church of his 
faith and in the simple, wholesome atmosphere 
of a clean home, and the education of the schools 
was supplemented by private instruction in the 
classics imparted by the Rev. P. Krose, a schol- 
arly French Jesuit Father. Through all his days 
he was a constant reader of the best in litera- 
ture, a close and appreciative student of his- 
tory, biography, philosophy, and the humanist 
writers, a keen observer of men and causes; 
and the training of the law school and the con- 
tests of the courts gave him a discipline that 
was valuable in tempering his ardor and restrain- 
ing and guiding his enthusiasms and impulses. 

While still a lad, he and his people went 
through a long season of that social and politi- 

19 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



cal insanity known as Know-nothingism, when 
the government of Massachusetts weakly and 
abjectly permitted the brutal, bigoted, and 
ignorant elements of the native community to 
insult and outrage the Catholic population of 
the Commonwealth. In Boston, as elsewhere, 
this cult was recruited from the lower and baser 
elements of the community, and fostered by the 
more unscrupulous class of politicians, who 
then, as now, were willing to sacrifice the peace 
and happiness of the Commonwealth for the 
spoils of office; and then, as in recent years, the 
so-called better element, with a few notable 
exceptions, smugly deplored the violence and 
lawlessness of these dubious friends of Ameri- 
canism and Protestantism, and as smugly con- 
fessed their belief in the principles of the cult, 
as they euphemistically termed the outrage and 
insult perpetrated in the names of religion and 
patriotism. 

It was a trying season, and the patience of the 
Irish and Catholic population under the condi- 
tions was as amazing as admirable. Gargan 
used to say in his sunny way, with a twinkle in 
his eye, that, for a people reputed to be as 
lacking in self-control as in timidity, the Irish 
Catholics were a singularly calm and peaceful 
people in the face of this constant and irritating 
insult and brutality; but they were perilously 

20 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



near the limit of their patience at times. The 
volunteer lire companies of Boston in those days 
were as quarrelsome and noisy as they were in- 
competent and vainglorious. They contained 
a large share of the town bullies in their red- 
shirted contingents. These vociferous heroes 
were Know-nothings to a man, and they found 
rare pleasure in baiting and insulting their 
Catholic neighbors. When the day came that 
these pot-valiant defenders of Americanism and 
Protestantism grew weary and bored of mere 
individual outrages, and let it be known that 
they intended to burn up the Catholic Church 
and drive out the pestilent alien and Catholic 
population, it looked to the Irish as if Orange 
Ulster had been transported to and transplanted 
in Boston, and they made preparations to re- 
ceive their visitors with all the honors of war. 
Wiser heads, however, waited on the abject 
rulers of Boston, and they were told quietly, but 
emphatically, that, when the Know-nothing in- 
vasion of the North End was over, it might be 
necessary to rebuild a large portion of the city 
and bury a number of its militant natives. 

Probably few of the weaklings and bigots of 
Boston in those days knew or appreciated how 
much the city owed to Bishop Fitzpatrick, who 
with genuine Christian spirit held in check his 
fiery and justly incensed people, guided them 

21 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



into the paths of peace and sanity, and in all 
human probability saved Boston from strife 
and bloodshed. Mr. Gargan loved to recall the 
character and conduct of this patient and genu- 
inely good prelate, to whose tireless efforts in 
preaching peace and patience Boston owed its 
escape from civil war in its streets, and he 
hoped that some day a proper recognition of his 
services to the higher interests of the Common- 
wealth would be made. 

The danger of civil war in the streets of 
Boston drove the civic rulers to a grudging per- 
formance of their duty; but the meanness and 
bitterness of those days left a bad taste in the 
mouth of the Irish for many a day, though it 
never deterred them from risking their lives for 
the Republic in the days of national stress and 
trial. 

Gargan grew up in this atmosphere uncon- 
taminated. The only effect that Know-nothing- 
ism had upon him was to intensify his loyalty 
and devotion to his race and religion, and to 
create in his heart an inexpugnable contempt 
and hatred for religious bigotry and race preju- 
dice. Until the day of his death Thomas J. 
Gargan always evinced a contempt and dis- 
trust of men who attempted to manufacture 
political capital by appeals to race and religious 
prejudices, and it made no difference what race 

22 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



or religion the demagogue and self-seeker pro- 
fessed or assailed. He was still a boy when the 
War of the Rebellion broke out, and, though the 
ardors of Know-nothingism had begun to cool 
off, the thing still lived. 

At one of the war meetings held in Faneuil 
Hall in those trying days a Know-nothing 
orator, who had modestly kept from the glare 
and smoke of the battlefield and confined his 
patriotic activities to Massachusetts, took occa- 
sion to question the loyalty of the adopted 
citizens of Massachusetts and to berate what he 
tactfully termed their lack of patriotism. This 
pragmatic patriot was, doubtless, one of that 
peculiar breed called in these days an Anglo- 
Saxon; for certainly no man with a gleam of 
humor in his system would have made such a 
charge, even were the facts as stated. The 
Irish Catholics had been insulted in the streets 
of Boston and outraged on their own thresh- 
olds. They were denied the protection of 
law and government; their honesty was ques- 
tioned, their religion reviled, and their race 
ridiculed. Coming to a land their countrymen 
had helped to free and a republic they had 
fought to found, they were received with sus- 
picion and treated with indignity; and yet 
their ignorant and intolerant persecutors were 
now complaining that they were not patriotic. 



23 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



False as the charge was, it had its comic aspect, 
and it was difficult to decide whether these 
blatant accusers were merely impudent or plainly 
stupid; that they lacked humor was only too 
evident. It is difficult to imagine a Russian 
of Kitcheneff, finding fault with the Jews for 
not volunteering to march on Manchuria for 
the privilege of fighting and dying for a czar 
whose officials had mocked their religion and 
plundered and murdered their kin; yet these 
humorless defenders of Americanism and Prot- 
estantism, the Know-nothings, affected to be 
outraged and indignant that the Irish did not 
rush to the South to defend a flag and govern- 
ment that had failed to protect them. As 
matter of fact, the Irish did go South to battle 
for the flag. They had the brain and wit to 
distinguish between the real Americanism in- 
carnated by Lincoln and the spurious patriot- 
ism of nether Boston, and they went cheerfully 
into the battle for the Union, while the valiant 
persecutors of women and children and the 
burners of churches and convents stayed at 
home in Boston to labor in more profitable 
fields of patriotism. 

On the occasion of the Faneuil Hall meeting, 
where these charges of disloyalty were made, 
there was a call for young Gargan to answer 
them, and Mayor Norcross, of Boston, who was 

24 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



presiding, invited the boy to the platform, where 
he demolished the comic patriot in short order. 
He showed that, while every regiment that 
Massachusetts sent South had its share of 
Irishmen — adopted citizens — in its ranks, two 
(the 8th and the 28th) were recruited almost 
exclusively by men of Irish birth and parent- 
age; and few regiments in the Union Army 
gave better or more continuous service than 
these, fought with more courage or resolution, 
or showed a higher percentage of killed and 
wounded. His address was received with gen- 
erous applause, and at its close he was unani- 
mously chosen a member of the Union Com- 
mittee of Boston. 

Gargan used to tell this story with great 
relish. The humor of the situation and the im- 
pudence of the slanderer amused him, and he 
often added, with a smile, that the record of 
Irish magnanimity, patriotism, and sacrifice 
was forgotten or ignored when the occasion for 
them had passed; and the heirs of Know- 
nothingism, the so-called "A. P. A.," had 
few qualms about repeating the slanders and 
stupidities of their predecessors in those arts, 
and had as little difficulty in gaining credence 
for them in a community whose baser and nar- 
rower elements were gifted with longer ears 
than memories, and whose lungs were entirely 



25 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



out of proportion to their knowledge, sense, in- 
telligence, and Americanism. 

Later, when his years and inches made it 
possible, he enlisted as a private in the newly 
organized 55th Regiment of Massachusetts Vol- 
unteers and was elected a second lieutenant 
of Company C. Four months after being 
mustered into the United States service, he 
was detailed on recruiting service; and, when 
the 55th was merged into the 48th Regiment 
at a later period, he was honorably dis- 
charged. 

For a time he was the confidential clerk of 
Governor Sprague of Rhode Island and the 
Boston representative of the house of A. & W. 
Sprague, of which the governor was the head. 
While industrious and attentive to business, 
in which he achieved a measurable success, 
he found mercantile life distasteful to him. 
His tastes and talents lay in other directions. 
He believed that such gifts as he possessed 
would find a more useful and successful outlet 
in a professional career and in the semi-public 
functions incidental to such a life. The forum, 
the platform, the court-room, the halls of 
legislation, attracted and called him: the shop 
and counting-room repelled him; and he felt 
his best work could only be done where his 

26 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



heart was, in the fields that would call out his 
best efforts. 

Ambitious and industrious, he devoted his 
days to the work of business and the shop 
and his nights to the study of books that would 
help him in the public career he had mapped 
out for himself; but he could not afford to give 
up business until he had saved enough to carry 
him through the law school with decency and 
without sacrifice of his self-respect. He burned 
the midnight oil sedulously, and kept tena- 
ciously at the work of study and self-education 
far into the small hours, night after night; 
for his courage and resolution were far in 
excess of his physical strength. Doubtless these 
youthful sacrifices and labors had much to do 
with that physical frailty he was compelled to 
combat all his days, and which might have 
ruined the temper and discouraged the hopes 
of a man less optimistic, cheery, and uncon- 
querable than the slender, nervous Gargan. 
He illustrated truly the aphorism that not 
the ore that lies in the sunshine, but that which 
goes through the fire and flame, makes the 
steel. 

He began the study of law in the Boston 
University, from which he was graduated in 
the spring of 1875 w i tn tne degree of LL.B., 
and in April of the same year he was admitted 

27 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



to practice. While yet in mercantile life, he 
had served in the Massachusetts House of 
Representatives in 1868 and 1870. The year 
he was admitted to the bar he served on the 
Board of Overseers of the Poor of Boston, 
and in 1876 he was once more in the House of 
Representatives. During this session a bill for 
the taxation of church property in Massa- 
chusetts was introduced, and a notable speech 
made by Gargan was the deciding factor in 
compassing its defeat. The bill merely repre- 
sented a feeble revival of those religious preju- 
dices which die so slowly in Massachusetts, 
and it was an attempt to stab by indirection, — 
a species of legislative Trojan horse garrisoned 
by rather nerveless bigots. Framed osten- 
sibly to check the growth of ecclesiastical 
wealth and power, and designed on the surface 
as a modern Statute of Mortmain, it assumed 
an air of fair play and religious tolerance by 
exempting poor and feeble churches and so- 
cieties from the operations of the Act, poverty 
and feebleness being indicated by some such 
arbitrary amount as #5,000. In a community 
where there were, for instance, some 20,000 
Protestants divided up among a dozen dif- 
ferent sects and worshipping in a dozen little 
churches, the probability was that not one of 
them would be taxed, unless possibly an Angli- 



28 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



can or Congregational church of a well-to-do 
parish. In the same community there might 
be 10,000 Roman Catholics divided into pos- 
sibly three parishes, each of which had built 
a handsome church and parish house: doubt- 
less, the physical value of the Catholic churches 
would each equal that of two or three of the 
Protestant houses of worship; and, while the 
bogus saving clause of poverty and feebleness 
would cover the Protestant, the Catholic would 
be outside of it. Wrong in principle and dis- 
honest in practice, the bill represented the old 
discredited Know-nothingism thinly disguised; 
and, when Gargan opened his guns on it, its 
friends ran to cover and it perished ignobly. 

During the next two years, 1877 and 1878, 
Mr. Gargan was chairman of the Board of 
License Commissioners of Boston, and in 1880 
and 1 88 1 he was a member of the Board of 
Police; and in both boards he gained a repu- 
tation for good judgment, impartiality, effi- 
ciency in administration, and high and honor- 
able standards of conduct in public office. 
He made no parade of public and personal 
probity; there was nothing pharisaical about 
him; he did his duty quietly, courteously, and 
firmly; he sought to conserve and protect the 
rights of both city and citizen; he neither 
stretched the law nor magnified his own im- 

29 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



portance; and he left office as he had entered it, 
with clean hands. 

Thomas J. Gargan's reputation as a lawyer 
had been growing steadily with experience and 
increased practice. He was engaged in many 
notable cases, and was rising in the esteem and 
respect of his legal confreres and in the confi- 
dence and admiration of his fellow-citizens. To 
a philosophic, logical, and well-stored mind he 
added an intellectual breadth, a quick wit, a 
gentle humor, a temperamental charm, and a 
fluent, persuasive, and compelling oratory that 
made him a formidable antagonist and a valu- 
able ally; and his professional practice was 
marked by an industry and conscientious devo- 
tion to causes that earned him not only the 
confidence and affection of his clients, but the 
respect and recognition of the courts. 

Outside his profession his civic and social 
worth was recognized, and his attractive gifts 
were in frequent demand. He was a popular 
expositor of the principles and doctrines of his 
political party; he was a charming after-dinner 
speaker; he understood the rare, fine art of tell- 
ing a story; he was a favorite on the lecture 
platform; his generous nature made him unable 
to deny the frequent calls which charity made 
upon his services, and, if anything, he gave of 
himself too freely and taxed his strength and 

30 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



energy too prodigally for others. He seemed to 
feel that 

"He that made us with such large discourse, 
Looking before and after, gave us not 
That capability and godlike reason 
To fust in us unused." 



Slender, graceful, nervous, never of robust 
physique, responsive to every draft upon his 
time and talent, Gargan rather overtaxed him- 
self, and he resolved wisely to take a holiday, 
to seek rest, recreation, and recuperation in a 
new land and under kindly skies, and in 1881 
he went to Mexico, then a comparative terra 
incognita to Americans. The "Land of God 
and Liberty," as the people of Mexico rather 
grandiloquently called the republic, was at that 
period in a transition stage; the results of the 
French invasion by the armed forces of Napo- 
leon the Little and the seizure of the govern- 
ment for his puppet Maximilian were passing; 
the days of the revolutionist and brigand, the 
politician with the sword, were about over; the 
peace of exhaustion was upon the land. Porfirio 
Diaz was ruling the republic with an iron hand. 
The legality of his title was a quibble for lawyers, 
since no one was prepared to test his actual 
possession of the presidency; and he was bring- 
ing peace, prosperity, security, and stability of 

31 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



government out of the chaos, disorder, uncer- 
tainty, and instability that had so long marked 
the national political life of Mexico. It was an 
interesting reorganization: the sense of security 
and hope filling the minds of the people, the 
problems and plans of those who held the gov- 
ernment, and the general feeling of optimism 
prevailing in the country appealed to a man 
whose nature was as kindly and sympathetic 
as Gargan's. He was impressed immensely by 
the intrinsic virtues of the people themselves. 
He spoke often of the fact that all the years of 
revolution and unrest had made little, if any, 
impression upon the abiding springs of the 
nation's life, its religious, moral, and domestic 
ideals, beliefs, and traditions. He found the 
Mexicans kindly, generous, hospitable. He saw 
that their domestic life was clean, wholesome, 
happy, and marked by those virtues of paternal 
affection and care and filial respect and love 
which make the home ideal and its influence 
permanent. His Mexican holiday he always 
recalled with pleasure; its educational influ- 
ences on him were valuable; it dissipated many 
erroneous opinions of the people derived from 
the writings of English and American authors, 
whose insularity, prepossession, and prejudice 
seemed to make them unable to deal fairly with 
anything Spanish, whose view of all things was 

32 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the provincial or cockney one, and whose 
motto was that anything that was different 
was necessarily inferior and wicked. The domi- 
nant tone of the English literature of travel and 
history is insular, Gargan used to say. The 
American subservience to or dependence upon 
that literature, up to very recent years, gave, 
unconsciously, an insular flavor to the taste and 
color of the thought of the average American 
reader; and, unconsciously, there grew in the 
mind of the reader a contempt and condescen- 
sion, a pity and patronage, that were as pathetic 
as ludicrous, for races and people that he really 
knew nothing about. The broadening of our 
literary horizon, the diversification of our liter- 
ary tastes, the draughts of knowledge from 
other than British sources, and the increase in 
travel in foreign lands, with its consequent more 
intimate and accurate knowledge of people, have 
done much to dissipate and destroy these erro- 
neous estimates of our neighbors. 

Not the least interesting feature of his Mexi- 
can vacation was his meeting with General 
U. S. Grant, who was then a visitor and guest 
in a country that in his younger days he had 
entered as a soldier and enemy. Mr. Gargan 
met the great soldier in the Mexican capital, and 
began a friendship which lasted while the con- 
queror of Appomattox lived. The sentiments 

33 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of respect and admiration which he had ever 
entertained for the character and achievement 
of General Grant were deepened by the modesty, 
simplicity, democracy, and hatred of ostentation 
and self-exploitation which a more intimate 
knowledge of and daily association with the 
man gave him. 

When he was called upon to preside at a 
dinner given by the American residents of the 
City of Mexico to the most famous and dis- 
tinguished American then living, Thomas J. 
Gargan naturally felt flattered and honored; 
and the many favorable comments made upon 
the felicity and grace with which he performed 
his task were very gratifying. The occasion 
was a notable one, and attracted international 
attention. Members of the Mexican Cabinet, 
diplomatic representatives, military dignitaries, 
and men of prominence in many lines were 
present and made addresses; and the cour- 
tesies extended to General Grant were not only 
pleasing to his countrymen at home and abroad, 
but they were the means of extending the repu- 
tation of Thomas J. Gargan as a speaker of 
tact, dignity, sympathy, charm, and eloquence, — 
a reputation which ceased to be local and became 
national. 

He returned home to work and duty, strength- 
ened and invigorated by his delightful holi- 

34 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



day, refreshed and recuperated by change and 
recreation; and he came back with an increased 
breadth of human view and a deeper and 
stronger belief in those principles of tolerance 
and fair play he had always held towards all 
men after witnessing the spectacle of a so- 
called " inferior" people working out their 
own national salvation with at least as much 
sincerity and zeal and with as large a measure 
of success as those who so vociferously and 
vaingloriously asserted their superiority. He 
began to realize what he had so often surmised, 
as he himself said laughingly, that national 
self-conceit, which so frequently does duty for 
patriotism, is after all merely magnified pro- 
vincialism. The psychology of the Kelt makes 
it impossible for him to be provincial: as that 
amusing character Rory O'More so humorously 
and epigrammatically phrases it, "An Irishman 
is never a foreigner." 

The occupation of Rome by the Italian army 
in 1870, after the withdrawal of the French 
Imperial troops, led to the annexation of the 
Papal States to the Kingdom of Italy and 
the suppression of the temporal power of the 
Papacy; and at once all the Italian laws aimed 
at the authority of the Catholic Church, the 
suppression of the religious orders, and the 

35 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



confiscation and secularization of church prop- 
erty became operative in the recent Papal 
territory. 

The Italian government moved with judi- 
cious caution: it was between the radicalism 
of the Garibaldian revolutionists, on one hand, 
and the conservative elements of the monarchy 
who wished to avoid collision with foreign 
powers, on the other. These and the poverty of 
the kingdom made the rulers willing to move 
slowly. 

The patriotism which takes the form of 
confiscation is seldom unpopular with the 
beneficiaries of it. The word "confiscation" is 
not popular with a world which toils and sweats, 
and it is usually concealed under more pleasing 
euphemisms ; and in Rome the work was marked 
by stealth, caution, and peculiar interpreta- 
tions of law, for Rome was the capital of the 
Catholic world, which was averse to having 
its property plundered to aid greed masquerad- 
ing as patriotism. 

There came a day when the Italian govern- 
ment felt strong enough to reach out for the 
property of the Sacred College of Cardinals de 
Propaganda Fide, commonly called the Congre- 
gation of Propaganda, which controls and di- 
rects the administration of the world-wide 
missionary activities of the Catholic Church. 



36 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



The College of Propaganda was established 
to train young men for the priesthood and pre- 
pare them for work in the missionary fields; 
and the gifts of many pious souls all over the 
Catholic world had gone to erect and maintain 
its physical property and to garner a work- 
ing capital ample enough to tempt the cupid- 
ity of the predatory patriots of United Italy. 
In 1883-84 the attempt to seize the property 
was made, the Italian courts providing the 
necessary interpretation of law to enable the 
patriots to proceed with a nice show of legality 
to the work of plunder. 

It is difficult in this land to imagine any 
American government deliberately plotting to 
cripple the splendid missionary activities of 
the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign 
Missions or any kindred society by confiscat- 
ing its property under a strained interpreta- 
tion of law. Church confiscation under the 
name of a spurious patriotism has never ap- 
pealed to the average American and it never 
will. 

At once the indignation of the Catholic 
world was aroused, and protests began to pour 
in on the startled Italian plunderers in such 
numbers and from such sources that they 
could neither be ignored nor defied, and the 
project was dropped as both dangerous and 

37 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



impolitic. Moreover, it began to be apparent 
that the Italian radicals were not only fighting 
the Catholic Church, but were warring against 
Christianity generally. 

In Boston a meeting of protest against the 
threatened confiscation was called by the Cath- 
olic Union, and it was held in Music Hall on 
the evening of May 8, 1884. Ex-Governor 
Gaston presided. The hall was packed to the 
doors; representative citizens of many religious 
faiths were present; and resolutions were passed 
calling on the President of the United States 
to take action to prevent the contemplated 
confiscation; and President Arthur responded 
promptly and cordially to the numerous pro- 
tests sent him. 

In speaking to the resolution, Thomas J. 
Gargan made an admirable address, basing 
his views on the universal sanctity which the 
laws of all civilized countries accorded to prop- 
erty whose use and purpose were for the benefit 
of religion and humanity. The address in part 
is given in another portion of this work. 

In 1885 Mr. Gargan was selected to deliver 
the annual Fourth of July address in Faneuil 
Hall, Boston. The patriotic custom of making 
a commemorative oration on the national 
birthday of the Republic has survived longer 
in Boston than in most American communi- 



38 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



ties as an occasion for a serious presenta- 
tion and discussion of American political prin- 
ciples and duties, and as a season and anni- 
versary when an appeal should be made to the 
people of the capital and Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts to honor and live close to the 
teachings and practices of the founders of the 
Republic. Fourth of July oratory continues 
and probably will continue as long as the 
Republic endures; but in Boston there is a 
distinct deterioration in the text and texture 
of the deliverances, and apparently an equally 
distinct distaste on the part of the citizens, with 
a sense of humor, to sit in hot halls to listen 
to the praise of principles that the majority 
of the people of Massachusetts appear to have 
repudiated, and the denunciation of practices 
that modern America condones and coddles. 
But in the remote days of the year of grace 
1885, anterior to the glorious era of imperialism 
and colonial dependencies, Massachusetts still 
professed a belief in the doctrines of the Fathers 
of the Republic and a reverence for the names 
and fame of her sons who had fought, suffered, 
and died for human freedom, the rights of 
man, and the principles of justice and national 
honor. In those dim days the people of the 
Massachusetts Commonwealth had not been 
educated by political opportunists and in- 

39 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



terested time-servers to believe that the prac- 
tices held to be odious by the patriots and 
heroes of the Revolution, and which cost 
George III. his American empire, had become 
glorious and patriotic when resurrected in our 
own day and applied to weak and helpless 
people by American statesmen and soldiers. 

Thomas J. Gargan was a sincere believer in 
and advocate of the pure and simple Ameri- 
canism of the early republic and the principles 
upon which it was founded; and he had a pro- 
found reverence for the labors and sacrifices of 
the men who had made the Republic and wrote 
its creed. The harsh experience which he and 
his underwent from those who forgot the teach- 
ings and lessons of their fathers taught him the 
weakness of men and the necessity for a con- 
stant iteration of American doctrines and re- 
statement of American principles. He felt that 
as eternal vigilance was the price of freedom, 
so was the persistent proclamation of free- 
dom's truths the best preventive of the evils 
which destroy free peoples, whether those evils 
be the bigotry and provincialism of Know- 
nothingism or the bullying and dishonesty of 
imperialism. He brought to his task of orator 
of that national birthday of 1885 faith, en- 
thusiasm, reverence for the day's significance, 
and a respect for those who had preceded him 

40 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



in that place in a similar duty. He was at 
his best, and Boston, which knows how to con- 
trol its emotions, pronounced his effort worthy 
of the day and its traditions, and the speaker 
fit to take his place among the oratorical elect 
of the city. 

Some of the opinions of the day are worth 
repeating. The Boston Post said, — 

Whether Mr. Gargan made the greatest effort of his 
life or not in his Fourth of July oration we cannot say, 
but it was an effort of which any man might feel proud and 
one which will strengthen the already enviable reputa- 
tion of that gentleman as an orator. 

The Boston Herald, at that time the sanest 
and most influential paper in Boston, said 
editorially: — 

He [Gargan] succeeded a long line of distinguished 
men who have stood in that position, beginning with 
John Warren in 1783, and there are in it Harrison Gray 
Otis, John Quincy Adams, Josiah Quincy, Charles 
Francis Adams, Peleg W. Chandler, Charles Sumner 
and Robert C. Winthrop. It must be said of Mr. Gar- 
gan's oration that he suffered nothing by comparison 
with these distinguished men, and the oration was worthy 
of the occasion and the man. 

One of the line of Gargan's distinguished 
predecessors cited by the Boston Herald, Peleg 

41 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



W. Chandler, in a sketch prepared for a maga- 
zine, after giving a brief story of Mr. Gargan's 
life and career, made these comments: — 

I take interest in giving these minute particulars 
because they show a self-made man of humble origin who 
just delivered one of the most able, eloquent, and in- 
teresting discourses of the day. It will compare favor- 
ably with those of his predecessors on this occasion, 
who have been reckoned among our ablest orators and 
statesmen, and I think it has been unequalled for fifty 
years in Boston. 

His reputation as an orator was firmly es- 
tablished now. His sincerity and elevation of 
thought, his simplicity and beauty of language, 
his felicity and clarity of expression, united 
with a pleasing and dignified presence and a 
voice as mellow and musical as a flute, made 
him an ideal speaker and one welcome at public 
functions and political occasions; and, though 
his generous nature impelled him to give his 
time and talent freely to all good causes, the 
increasing demands of his profession, and a 
physique that was none too strong, compelled 
him to conserve his strength and reserve his 
forces for occasions of importance, urgence, and 
duty, for Thomas J. Gargan took his political 
and professional duties with an honorable seri- 
ousness. 



42 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Politically, Thomas J. Gargan was a Demo- 
crat, his democracy comprehending an ad- 
herence to that simplicity, sanity, security, 
and economy of government and administra- 
tion associated with the name and teaching of 
Jefferson, and rejecting the chaotic hodge- 
podge of paternalism, quackery, sophistry, 
financial folly, economic absurdity, and social 
demagoguery, which has bewildered and be- 
devilled the democracy of the last two decades. 
He advocated sincerely and insistently the neces- 
sity of common sense and common honesty in 
all human activities. He was profoundly con- 
vinced that the Constitution of the United 
States and the preaching and practice of the 
men who cradled and fostered this Republic 
were crystallized in those two homely virtues, 
and that any departures from those simple 
standards were politically dangerous and morally 
wrong. He refused to be deflected from what 
he conceived to be the straight and well-worn 
path of political honor and duty by either the 
seductive greed and sugar-coated dishonesty of 
one party or the vociferous folly and sophis- 
tical dishonor of the other. 

The Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount 
were as strong and sweet, as simple and intel- 
ligible, as sacred and needful, for the race, 
he believed, to-day as in any past age. He 

43 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



neither expurgated the one nor attenuated the 
other; he rejected delectable and delusive 
euphemisms; and he refused to whip the Devil 
around the post. "Thou shalt not steal," 
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not covet," 
"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy 
neighbor," were moral mandates as necessary 
in public as in private life, as essential in the 
dealings of one nation with another as between 
man and man. Murder, theft, slander, and 
dishonor did not change their essence nor lose 
their evil by changing their terminology and 
calling themselves war, militarism, imperial- 
ism, protection, greenbackism, free-silverism, 
or any other of the numerous and glittering 
phases of depravity with political paternity 
and sonorous nomenclature. The spade still 
remained a spade. 

In days of political excitement and public 
unrest, when plunder and pretence are tricked 
out in garments of patriotism and civic right- 
eousness, when the loudest shouter is the 
greatest patriot, it requires conscience, convic- 
tion, and courage to enable a man to stand 
unwaveringly by unpopular truth and ridi- 
culed principle, and face undismayed the clamor 
of the unthinking, the rage of the misled, and 
the sophistries and sneers of the selfish and 
sinister; and this precisely is what Thomas J. 

44 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Gargan did time and again unflinchingly, 
for his code was simple, his conscience clear, 
and his courage commensurate with his con- 
victions. He was neither Pharisee nor reac- 
tionary: he feared God, respected his con- 
science, prized his soul, and obeyed the law. 
His courage and capacity made him honored 
by the worthy, just as his rectitude, resource- 
fulness, and wit compelled the respect of those 
who went roaring with the mob. 

In 1886 Mr. Gargan was invited to make the 
centennial address at the celebration of the 
one hundredth anniversary of the founding of 
the Charitable Irish Society of Halifax, N.S.; 
and later in the year his speech ratifying the 
nomination of the Hon. Frederic O. Prince for 
governor of Massachusetts, and his reply in 
Faneuil Hall to a political deliverance of James 
G. Blaine, were the subjects of admiration and 
applause. In 1888 he was the orator at the 
Commencement at Manhattan College, New 
York; and in 1894, upon the invitation of the 
city government of Boston, he delivered an 
admirable eulogy on the character and career 
of ex-Governor William Gaston, recently de- 
ceased. His address in 1896 presenting the 
John Boyle O'Reilly monument and memorial 
group to the city of Boston, and the eulogy 
delivered in 1905 on his dead friend, Patrick A. 



45 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Collins, were among the best efforts of his 
career; for he was not only speaking of men 
who had been honored and esteemed in the 
community, but he was eulogizing the com- 
rades he loved and with whom he had 
worked shoulder to shoulder in a hundred good 
causes. 

The social side of Thomas J. Gargan was 
a very attractive one. His well-stored mind, 
joyous temperament, native wit, racy humor, 
wealth of experience, fund of anecdote, felicity 
of expression, and unruffled good-humor made 
him an ideal comrade. He was one of the 
original "Four of Us" Club, the others being 
John F. McEvoy of Lowell, John Boyle 
O'Reilly, and Patrick A. Collins. This club 
met from time to time to lunch and talk and 
discuss books, poetry, politics, the progress of 
their race, the affairs of the iand of their fathers, 
and any and all things likely to yield pleasure 
or profit in their discussion. It was a brilliant 
group, and with the passage of time its number 
increased to about a dozen; and after O'Reilly's 
death it was called in his honor and memory 
the John Boyle O'Reilly Club. Its Saturday 
luncheons were as joyous and enjoyable as any 
gatherings in Boston, marked as they were by 
discussion, anecdote, wit, humor, the give and 

46 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



take of brain and tongue, and, withal, a fine 
hospitality for any and all opinion. The 
luncheon was merely a peg upon which the 
feast of reason and the flow of the soul were 
hung; and, when the coffee and cigars ended 
the modest menu, the real things of the gather- 
ings were born, and time passed quickly in an 
atmosphere charged with radiant good fellow- 
ship. There O'Reilly read many of his poems 
before printer, publisher, and public saw them; 
there many of Jeffrey Roche's sparkling verses 
were heard for the first time; and there many a 
good story of bar and bench, travel and trouble, 
Church and State, was started on its joyous 
journey by Gargan, Collins, and others, and set 
the table in a roar. Seldom a Saturday went 
by that A. Shuman — who, by common con- 
sent and agreement, had come to look after the 
material affairs of the club and to act towards 
the joyous group of grown-up boys in loco 
parentis — did not notify them that some native 
notability or some visitor from abroad was 
to be the guest of the body; and, whether the 
guests were friends or strangers, all seemed to 
relish the hospitality and bonhomie of the 
O'Reilly Club. Among the many who have 
broken bread at its hospitable board may be 
recalled: Charles Stewart Parnell; John Dil- 
lon; John Redmond; Theodore Roosevelt; 

47 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Colonel Arthur Lynch, condemned to death 
for treason and now an M.P.; Justin McCarthy; 
the elder Sothern; John McKinnon Robert- 
son, of London, author, lecturer, and M.P.; 
Seumas McManus; Terence Bellew, father of 
Kyrle Bellew; Shaw-Taylor, of Galway; Con- 
nellan, the Roman correspondent; Paul du 
Chaillu, explorer, traveller, and author; and 
many others, — soldiers and sailors of the Re- 
public and men prominent in the affairs of 
State and nation. 

Once a year the club met at Hetmere, the 
beautiful and hospitable home of A. Shuman 
down by the sea at Beverly, and there the health 
of the quick and the memory of the dead were 
remembered and toasted. Death, the reaper, 
was always at work. McEvoy and O'Reilly 
were followed by Collins; Wyman and Bel- 
knap, gentlemen and sailor-men, had gone upon 
their last voyage; Jeffrey Roche had answered 
the last call; others were scattered here and 
there; but dead or alive, present or absent, 
none was forgotten. The O'Reilly Club was 
close to Tom Gargan's heart. He went to it 
with pleasurable anticipation, he left it cheered 
and inspirited, and he loved to recall the good 
things he had listened to and to chuckle over 
them in reminiscence. 



48 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



He belonged to the Catholic and Champlain 
Clubs of New York, the Mount Pleasant Chap- 
ter, Knights of Columbus, and the Catholic 
Union of Boston, and he was one of the trus- 
tees of the Catholic Summer School of America. 
His attitude towards these bodies was largely 
one of duty. He regarded them in a large 
measure as lay agencies of his Church, whose 
activities were designed to be as much Catholic 
and religiously conservative as social. 

He was a member of the Charitable Irish 
Society of Boston, a body founded in 1737, 
at a period when, according to the veracious 
chroniclers of New England, the Irishman was 
an unknown quantity in the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts. However, the society was 
founded by persons, as Gargan used to say 
with a smile, who ignorantly called themselves 
Irish without waiting to be identified and 
labelled by the New England mythologists of 
the Lodge school, and he was always warmly 
interested in the progress and work of this 
historic society, and often spoke at its gather- 
ings and anniversaries. With a perversity al- 
most shocking this ancient society celebrated 
Patrick's Day year in and year out, doubtless 
to irritate the solemn historical romancers of 
Boston. 

Thomas J. Gargan was, all his years, fond 



49 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of the study of history. Memoirs and biog- 
raphies of the great dead gave him a keen en- 
joyment; and, while history in its general 
sense appealed to him, the history of the dis- 
covery, conquest, and settlement of America, 
and the story of Ireland and the Irish, touched 
his mind and heart most keenly. He was 
broad in his sympathies, and his admiration 
for the discoverers and pioneers of what is now 
the American Republic, and their courage and 
achievement, was hearty and genuine. Noth- 
ing so stirred his indignation and contempt as 
the latter-day perversions of truth and the dis- 
tortions of fact which have been foisted on the 
American people as history. When half a 
dozen men, along in 1896, met and discussed 
the founding of a society to combat this evil, 
as far as it concerned the American-Irish, he 
was interested at once; and when on the even- 
ing of January 20, 1897, the organizers gathered 
at the Revere House, Boston, and founded the 
American-Irish Historical Society, he presided 
over its deliberations. 

The announced purpose of the society was 
the study of American history generally, but 
specially to investigate the part played by the 
Irish race in the discovery, exploration, settle- 
ment, and upbuilding of the country, and to en- 
deavor, as far as the ascertainment of facts and 

50 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



figures could so do, to correct erroneous and 
distorted views of historical transactions and to 
promote and foster an honorable and national 
spirit of American patriotism. The society 
was really the conception of one of Thomas J. 
Gargan's friends, Mr. Joseph Smith of Lowell, 
who interested James Jeffrey Roche, John C. 
Linnehan of Concord, N.H., and Thomas 
Hamilton Murray of Lawrence, Mass., all now 
dead, and with their aid drew up a call for signa- 
tures, wrote a constitution and by-laws, and 
made preparation for starting the society right. 
The call was signed by some thirty men, among 
whom, besides Thomas J. Gargan, were Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, Senator Patrick Walsh of 
Georgia, Senator Matthew Galbraith Butler 
of South Carolina; Rev. Dr. Thomas J. Conaty, 
rector of the Catholic University, Washington, 
D.C.; Admiral Meade, U.S.N. ; Rev. George 
Pepper, Cleveland, Ohio; Rev. Andrew Mor- 
rissey, president of the University of Notre 
Dame, Indiana; and others, representing vari- 
ous religious beliefs and racial admixtures. It 
is somewhat difficult for the average, easy- 
going, thoughtless American of non-Irish origin 
to understand and appreciate the depth and 
bitterness of the contempt and indignation 
with which men of the Irish race view the de- 
liberate perversion of the plain facts of history 



5i 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



to discredit the Irish people; and when this 
distortion of truth, this falsification of record 
and fact, is accompanied by a smug and phari- 
saic air of superiority, a constant iteration of 
platitude, and a deliberate and unrebuked mis- 
appropriation of historic honors, the American- 
Irish can hardly be censured for believing that 
the pseudo-historians of New England are 
utterly incapable of writing truth, that they 
prefer legend and fiction to hard facts and rec- 
ord, and are essentially untrustworthy. When 
we find legends built over night accepted in the 
morning as historic fact; when, for instance, 
in the teeth of a denial from John Hay, the 
American Secretary of State, and in defiance 
of the existent documentary evidence, we are 
asked to accept the apocryphal story of 
European conspiracy against America during 
the Spanish War and a noble advocacy of our 
cause by the British Empire, — what chance has 
historic truth a century or more old against the 
resolute determination to falsify? 

Hence the American-Irish Historical So- 
ciety was born. In his post-prandial address 
Gargan touched on this peculiar attitude of 
New England's so-called historians, and among 
other things said: — 

In our proposed work we will discard the legendary 
and the mythical. We are living in a scientific age at 

52 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the end of the Nineteenth Century, the age of the micro- 
scope and the X-ray, and we ask for the acceptance of no 
historical data that will not bear the modern search- 
light and that is not sufficiently proven. The object 
of this association is to call to mind those noble types of 
men and women that the Irish race has sent here, that 
we may receive credit for our fair share in the develop- 
ment and maintenance of a government founded upon 
manhood. We, of this generation, decline to accept 
that series of lies which English historians and their 
imitators have agreed upon as a truthful history of what 
the Irish have done in this country or any other country. 

Rear-Admiral Richard Worsam Meade, 
U.S.N., was chosen as first president-general 
of the society; the Hon. Edward A. Moseley 
succeeded him; and Mr. Gargan was elected 
to the position in 1899 and 1900, his interest 
and sympathy for its work aiding materially 
in its growth and prosperity. 

Mr. Gargan was a member of the University 
Club of Boston, as well as of the well-known 
literary and Bohemian organization, the Papy- 
rus Club. 

In the latter part of the year 1893 he was 
appointed a member of the Boston Transit 
Commission by Mayor Nathan Matthews, and 
he retained his official connection with that 
body until he died. The Commission built the 
Tremont Street Subway, the East Boston Tun- 

53 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



nel, and the Washington Street Subway, and 
these works were constructed well within the 
amount appropriated for them and in such 
manner that no similar structures in America 
or Europe surpass them in stability, adapta- 
tion of means to end, and practical utility. 
Mr. Gargan gained the esteem and affection of 
his fellow-commissioners by his wisdom, sound 
counsel, and genial temperament, guiding them 
over many a hard spot and helping to untangle 
many a knotty problem. He set his face as a 
flint against the meddling of politicians in the 
work to be done, and was one with his co-mates 
in keeping political methods out of a great 
public work, which was carried to success with 
efficiency, economy, and an eye single to the 
public good. 

In the business life of the city and State he 
helped to organize the United States Trust 
Company and the Columbian National Life 
Insurance Company, in both of which bodies 
he was a trustee. 

In 1909 Mr. Gargan received his last appoint- 
ment to any public office when he was made 
one of the Commissioners of the Metropoli- 
tan Improvement Commission, which the act 
of legislature creating it said — 

Shall be composed of persons of recognized qualifica- 
tion and large experience in respect to one or more of the 



54 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



following subjects or professions: finance, commerce, 
industry, transportation, real estate, architecture, en- 
gineering, civic administration, and law. 



All through life Mr. Gargan identified him- 
self with nearly every movement designed to 
better the political and industrial condition of 
Ireland; but he was not narrow in his sym- 
pathies, and was willing to aid any sane 
and honorable attempt for political and reli- 
gious liberty anywhere with voice and pen and 
purse. 

The Jew fighting the persecution of the 
Muscovite; the struggle of the Pole against 
Prussia and Russia and the Finn against the 
Czar; the Armenian seeking protection from 
the lust of the Kurd and the sword of the Turk; 
and the Boer in arms against the greed and 
guilt of an empire,— these all appealed to him, 
and called forth a friend in need. Cruelty and 
intolerance, ignorance and bigotry, he fought 
constantly; but he never allowed his wrath 
at the evil to extend to the man, and many a 
foeman was disarmed by his quick wit and 
gentle humor. 

It was characteristic of the man that during 
his last illness, from which a few months later 
he died, he could still think of the political 
hopes of Ireland, and, forgetting his pains, find 

SS 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the time and the opportunity to send a check 
from Wiesbaden to the United Irish League fund 
in Boston. 

Whether in the legislative chamber or the 
court-room, in board meeting or public hearing, 
on the street or in his home, Mr. Gargan al- 
ways had with him a fine courtesy and a quick 
wit; and his good temper, good manners, pa- 
tience, and alertness were things that impressed 
juries and audiences, charmed the bench and 
quite frequently disarmed his opponents. It 
was a delight, as a rule, to all in court when 
"Tom" Gargan in his halcyon days appeared 
for a client; and it was in a trial at Cambridge 
that a justice said, "I am glad to see you here, 
Brother Gargan: when you are trying a case, 
there is no dull music in the court-room." 
He had that gift which is more valuable than 
genius in knowing when to question a witness 
and when to let him alone; and he knew how 
to create an atmosphere of sympathy for his 
client, just as at times by a question or sug- 
gestion he could with gentleness and blandness 
extract an answer from the other side that 
was calculated to engender suspicion and doubt 
in the minds of a listening jury. 

At a heated hearing over some plans sub- 
mitted for a public building, the purposes of 

56 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



which were altogether practical and utilitarian, 
the architectural scheme was rather severely 
criticised; and, although since their utiliza- 
tion and the erection of the building they have 
proven acceptable and have grown in public 
favor, at that time they were unpopular in 
some very authoritative circles. Their rejec- 
tion and the consequent delays following such 
action would have been vexatious and detri- 
mental to public interests, and Gargan was 
retained to look after the Department's rights 
and action. The opposition had put on a 
public man whose professional standing was 
high and whose opinions were held to be al- 
most infallible; and he scored the architect's 
plans unmercifully. His was a testimony that 
was all the more difficult to negative because 
it was simple, direct, positive, and hard to con- 
trovert. Gargan did not seek to do this: 
he simply started in to create an atmosphere 
of doubt. His shrewdness and knowledge of 
human nature made him work upon that phase 
of mind which makes men revolt from infal- 
libility, which leads them to tire of and reject 
perfection, just as they tired of and rejected 
him who was called Aristides the Just. 

His examination of the great man was brief, 
bland, gentle, and soft-voiced, and ran in about 
this way: — 

57 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



"Michel Angelo was one of the world's 
greatest artists and architects?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"His work was criticised harshly by his con- 
temporaries?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"But it has grown to be the admiration and 
wonder of the world?" 

"Yes, sir." 

"Thank you, Mr. — , that will be all." 

The doubt as to the justice of the criticisms, 
not the knowledge or good faith, of the expert 
was planted and germinated and the plans 
were accepted. A less clever man might have 
let the dangerous witness go unquestioned or 
have unwisely doubled the danger by bringing 
out more of his positive knowledge in attempt- 
ing to discredit his standing. Gargan took 
him on his unguarded side, and sweetly suggested 
by his simple harmless questions that even the 
best men are not devoid of envy and the 
greatest not free from carpers and critics. 

"Tom" Gargan and "Tom" Riley were 
personal friends of long standing. Both were 
equipped with wit and humor, both were well- 
trained men; and time and again they faced 
each other as antagonists in the trial of causes. 
Then the members of the Suffolk Bar enjoyed 
themselves, for it was Greek against Greek; 



58 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



and, when they crossed swords and matched 
wits, the dull precincts of justice were filled 
with sunshine. Each waited alert to trip the 
other in a slip in his law, a misquotation of a 
text, a wrong reading of a poet, and a dozen 
other ways and means to rattle the other 
fellow out of his legal victory. "Tom" Riley 
had the poets and classics at his tongue's end y 
and that same tongue was tipped with a nice 
Doric brogue, and when one day he inter- 
jected, "He who steals my purse steals thrash," 
Gargan blandly suggested that Shakespeare had 
written "trash" which Riley's brogue had 
mellowed into "thrash." The bar snickered, 
the eyes on the bench twinkled, and "Tom" 
Riley shook his mane and waited for his turn 
to come later. 

Gargan always enjoyed telling the story of a 
seemingly slow-witted Irish witness who kept 
answering "Tom" Riley's questions with a 
monotonous "I don't know, sir," while the 
disgusted attorney kept running his fingers 
through his long locks nervously, for "Tom" 
Riley did love a jungle-like profusion of hair. 
Irritated at last by the persistent "Know- 
nothingism" of the witness, Riley walked over 
to him, and, pointing a finger of scorn at him, 
demanded satirically, "Is there anything you 
do know?" "Yes, sir," answered the witness 



59 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



as slowly and soberly as he had answered all 
his previous questions, — " I know enough to get 
my hair cut." 

The court-room was in a gale of laughter as 
the witness was told to step down. That 
allusion to a hair-cut was the unkindest cut of 
all, for it lost "Tom" Riley his case. The 
friendly rivals are both under the sod to-day, 
and the world still tastes the sweetness they 
brought to it. 

Gargan studied law in the office of Henry W. 
Paine, one of the ablest lawyers of his day. 
One day, years after he had been admitted to 
the bar and when his peculiar powers and gifts 
had been demonstrated, Paine came upon Gar- 
gan in the Registry Office, engaged in a task 
customarily esteemed pure drudgery by law- 
yers, — the examination of a title of a parcel of 
real estate. Stepping over to Gargan, the older 
man said, "What! a race horse at the plough?" 
Another and honored member of the profession, 
Justice Blodgett of the Massachusetts Su- 
perior Court, commenting on Gargan's ability 
as a speaker, said he was one of the few lawyers 
in Massachusetts who possessed the real gift 
of eloquence. 

His quickness of wit and his alertness in 
seizing victory from sudden situations were 
often illustrated. 

60 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



During the prevalence of the wretched 
A. P. A. mania a conspiracy was organized to 
disgrace a well-known Catholic priest and bring 
humiliation to his co-religionists; and a negro 
woman was selected and trained to do the work 
the scandalous crime called for. When the 
negress was testifying, her attorney called on 
the accused clergyman to rise in the court for 
the purpose of identification. Gargan was on 
his feet in an instant, and objected. Turning 
to the woman, he said, "Go over there where 
you see those priests sitting, and pick out the 
one you accuse of the crime." The woman 
picked out a young-looking priest, ignoring the 
man her perjuries had indicted, and the con- 
spirators were driven out of court. 

In asking the legislature, the General Court, 
to adjourn over Good Friday, Gargan heard a 
back country "Puritan" raise the objection 
that he had never heard of any court or legis- 
lature adjourning on that day, and rather rudely 
demanded to know if Gargan knew of any such. 
With admirable temper he came back like a 
flash, and said he had never heard of any 
court that held its session on Good Friday ex- 
cept one, and Pontius Pilate presided at 
that. It is needless to say the resolution was 
passed. 



61 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Thomas J. Gargan was hospitable and do- 
mestic in nature and taste. He loved his home, 
and was never better pleased than when his 
friends sat round his board. He was twice 
married. His first wife was Miss Catherine L. 
McGrath, to whom he was married in 1868. A 
charming and cultivated woman, a graduate of 
Notre Dame Academy, an excellent French and 
Spanish scholar, and a contributor of repute to 
the literary journals of the early sixties, Mrs. 
Gargan was withal a woman of quiet and do- 
mestic tastes, an ideal wife and helpmate, and 
her music and books, her culture and refinement, 
were given to her home and the circle of inti- 
mates that gathered there. For society in its 
broad and general sense she had little taste: her 
house was her kingdom, and the activities which 
took her beyond its circle were mainly religious 
and charitable. Always actively benevolent, 
Mrs. Gargan not only contributed generously 
to the charities of the Church, but she main- 
tained a small army of pensioners among the 
blind and defective poor of the city. Her death, 
August 28, 1892, was widely and sincerely 
mourned, and by none more than by the husband 
whose life she had brightened for twenty-four 
years. 

In December, 1898, he was wedded in the 
Baltimore Cathedral to Miss Helena NordhofT, 



62 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of Washington, a member of an old Catholic 
family of Westphalia, Germany, whose home- 
stead, dating from 1510, is still standing in 
Miinster, the capital of the duchy, and whose 
father was a colonel of German infantry. Mr. 
Gargan and Miss Nordhoff first met at the 
Catholic Summer School at Lake Champlain, 
and their acquaintance soon ripened into friend- 
ship and esteem. She was a woman of educa- 
tion, cultivation, travel, and refinement: he 
was a man of a singularly attractive nature. 
Each found the other a complement to each, 
and certainly the very happy life that followed 
the marriage, and the love and devotion that 
marked its existence until death came to shat- 
ter its happiness, proved the wisdom of the 
union. 

Though much of an invalid in later years and 
suffering more or less from an irritating in- 
testinal trouble, his home life, whether in 
Brimmer Street or Falmouth Heights, was an 
ideal one; and he was the first to forget his 
own invalidism when friends were in the house, 
and to laugh at his own ills. 

During the later years of his life he went 
several times to Europe, hoping by change of 
scene and the waters of the German baths to 
get rid of his ailment; and, while he seemed to 
come home improved in body and mind, it 



63 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



was evident that such improvement as he 
gained was merely temporary. Doubtless the 
deaths of many of his intimates affected him 
more than he confessed. The passing of Collins 
was a blow to him; the death of his old friend 
Paul du Chaillu, far from home in distant 
Russia, touched him sensibly; and, as he left 
the Church of St. Cecilia to take the steamer 
for Germany as the body of Jeffrey Roche was 
being borne out to be carried to Holyhood, he 
said to me, "They are all going, one by one: 
I believe I shall be the next." 

He went away and never came back in the 
flesh, yet he went away cheerful and hopeful; for 
even the pangs of what was an incurable illness 
were not poignant enough to conquer a spirit so 
cheery or painful enough to make his pessim- 
ism other than transitory. 

He went back to Wiesbaden, but it was soon 
apparent to his physicians that heroic treat- 
ment was necessary, if the evil he suffered from 
was to be eradicated, his health restored, and 
his life prolonged. Dr. Franz Jung and his 
wife, Dr. Sophie Jung, of Washington, D.C., 
sister and brother-in-law of Mrs. Gargan, both 
eminent in their profession, were with him in 
Wiesbaden; and they advised his removal to 
Berlin for consultation with and examination 
by the eminent specialist Professor Boas, of 



64 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the Prussian capital. There it was decided 
that a surgical operation was imperative to 
prevent death by slow starvation, and Mr. 
Gargan was taken to the private hospital of 
Professor Koerts, who performed the operation, 
July 23, 1908. He came out of the operation 
in good condition and in excellent spirits; but 
later post-operative pneumonia set in, and the 
weakened frame was unable to carry the brave 
and cheerful spirit through the crisis. After 
the last sacraments of his Church had been 
administered to him by the Reverend Father, 
the Count von Galen, chaplain of St. Anthony's 
Church of Berlin, with his wife and Dr. and 
Mrs. Jung at his bedside, Thomas J. Gargan 
went out and into a better and nobler world as 
calmly, bravely, confidently, and cheerily as he 
had lived in this one. To a man whose relig- 
ious faith was as simple, sincere, and unques- 
tioning as that of Thomas J. Gargan, death 
had no terrors. Death meant merely the end 
of pain and the beginning of a nobler life with 
the friends whom he had loved on earth and 
who had solved the great mystery before him; 
and, fortified by the consolations of his religion 
and the knowledge that he had lived clean and 
wrought straight, he saluted Death with a smile, 
and passed out of life as he had passed through 
it, high of heart and brave of soul. 



65 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



The news of his death, while not unexpected, 
was a shock to an army of friends and admirers. 
It called forth a chorus of unfeigned regret 
in public and private life, and the press without 
exception accepted his death as a distinct loss 
to Boston and the Commonwealth. I cannot 
express my sense of his loss, and that of hun- 
dreds with whom I came in contact, any better 
to-day than I did when the cables first told of 
his death, when I wrote these words in the Bos- 
ton Traveller: — 

In the death of Thomas J. Gargan, Boston has lost 
an ideal citizen; hundreds of residents of Boston have 
lost a friend they admired and honored; the men of his 
race and religion have lost an eloquent advocate and de- 
fender; and I have lost a comrade and intimate as dear to 
me as one of my own flesh and blood, a companion and 
friend whose friendship was tried and true, an associate 
whose graces of head and heart appealed to the best in 
me, and made his association a thing to be cherished and 
remembered until I shall answer the last call myself. 

"Tom" Gargan was a man of poetic and idealistic 
temperament; an honorable man, he loved all things hon- 
orable and eschewed the mean and contemptible things 
of life, be they men or causes; he was kindly, gentle, 
tender, and charitable in his relations to the world; he 
saw the cheap fibre of the Pharisee and the humbug, yet 
he seldom raised the voice censorious to confound the 
sinful and weak; his standards of conduct were simple 
and plain, and he lived, but never preached those stand- 
ards. Loyal and sincere in his friendships, he guarded 

66 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the reputations of his friends with jealousy, and thought 
no service too onerous to aid them over a rough place. 
Their success was his pleasure; the honors they achieved 
were a personal joy to him; and, once he took a man to 
his heart, — and no heart was more loyal and tender, — 
his name and fame remained through good report and 
evil. 

The friendship of "Tom" Gargan was a jewel of great 
price; and, until the gate that separates life and death 
shall open for me, I shall esteem that friendship one of 
the most precious things that has come into my earthly 
experience. 

Under date of June 17 he wrote me from Wiesbaden 
the last personal message on earth I received from him, 
and, whatever hopes physicians and friends may have 
held out to him, he himself felt he was starting upon his 
last journey when he went to Berlin. That letter was 
one of the most pathetic it has been my fortune to receive. 
He recalled all his intimates with affection, remembering 
their oddities and the qualities which bound him to them; 
and he faced what he believed to be the inevitable with 
a courage and resignation as admirable as cheerful. He 
spoke of the narrowing of our common circle of friends 
who had met for so many years; he noted the death of 
Admiral Belknap; he spoke of the passing of Paul du 
Chaillu, of Patrick A. Collins, of Julius Palmer, and of 
Jeffrey Roche, and he believed he would soon be with 
them; and then he referred with tender affection to those 
who still remained. The letter was that of a brave, 
kindly, reverent soul, who had lived up to his ideals, 
who had done his duty constantly and fearlessly, who had 
been true to his friendships, and was ready to close the 
book and face the future without a tremor. It was a 
strangely moving communication from a man writing 



67 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



his own death warrant and facing the end like the brave, 
true gentleman he was. He concluded by saying, "Let 
us hope that I am saying auj wiedersehen, and not good- 
bye." As Arthur Macy wrote: "Sit closer, friends. 
Here is health to the living and the memory of the dead." 
He is now himself among the dead, leaving behind 
him a memory fragrant of good deeds and tender 
affections; and surely no whiter and sweeter soul has 
ever entered into the goodly company of Heaven than 
"Tom" Gargan. I can say in all sincerity with his co- 
religionists in that faith he loved so well and served so 
long, May he rest in peace! and I can hope for nothing 
better when I am called to go hence than he will be 
waiting beyond to welcome me into that life which has 
no ending and into a continuance of a comradeship which 
will be eternal. 



All that was mortal of him was brought back 
across the sea to his Boston home in Brimmer 
Street, whence on the morning of October 16, 
1908, in the golden haze of autumn, he was 
borne to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, 
where the solemn and impressive funeral rites 
of his faith and Church were celebrated in the 
presence of dignitaries of Church and State, 
bench and bar, city and county, and a congre- 
gation that represented every walk of life, 
every activity of the community. Outside the 
sacred edifice the streets were congested with 
people unable to gain entrance to the cathedral, 
— a hushed and saddened gathering which had 

68 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



come to pay its last tribute of respect and 
affection to the man they had honored and 
esteemed in life. 

And so he passed out of the City of the Liv- 
ing into the City of the Dead, to find that 
surcease from pain, that everlasting peace and 
rest, which come only when life's fitful dream 
is o'er. They laid him under the cool sod of 
Holyhood where slept the comrades who had 
gone before him, — the silver tongue touched 
with the silence and mystery of death, the dead 
hands folded across his breast, on the dead lips 
the smile whose sweetness even death could not 
erase, the great heart stilled at last. 

"Dust to its narrow house beneath! 
Soul to its place on high! 
They that have seen thy look in death 
No more may fear to die." 



69 



APPENDIX. 

The death of any public man in American 
life calls out comment, much of which is tepid, 
banal, perfunctory. The very publicity of such 
a career seems to demand that its record shall 
be rounded out with the cool and conventional 
phraseology of that praise which custom has 
decreed and whose text is De mortuis nil nisi 
bonum. Only when the dead man has touched 
the heart and conscience of his fellows do we 
see the conventional swept aside and hear 
utterance and expression from press and people 
throbbing with genuine feeling. 

In the case of Thomas J. Gargan these ex- 
pressions of opinion were as spontaneous as 
sincere. They represented a very genuine sor- 
row, a regret mingled with affection and ad- 
miration for the dead man. 

The journalist is the hardest-worked and 
illest-paid man in the professions, as he is the 
most sophisticated; he is constantly behind the 
scenes; he sees the seamy side of men, the clay 
feet of idols; he is familiar with the tricks of 
popularity; he is difficult to awe and slow to 
hero-worship; he has long watched the making 
and breaking of soap bubbles; and he knows 

7i 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



public men with embarrassing accuracy. When 
the newspaper man drops the conventional and 
perfunctory and speaks of a man out of his 
heart, his opinion will represent an estimate of 
character and work that must command respect. 
Lack of space precludes any but a few quo- 
tations from the many opinions and estimates 
of Thomas J. Gargan, uttered and written after 
his death, and these are confined to those 
published in the press : — 

The Boston Transcript said of Gargan: "The news of 
the fatal termination of the illness of Thomas J. Gargan 
will cause profound regret to many circles in Boston with 
whose social life and public service he had been so long 
and so conspicuously identified. He was a brilliant and 
successful member of the Boston bar. . . . He possessed 
in a marked degree both the wit and eloquence of his 
race. . . . He was a delightful companion and a man of 
high civic and social ideals." 

And the Boston Herald: "Mr. Gargan exemplified some 
of the finest qualities of mind and heart of the race that 
has come to play so large a part in the history of modern 
New England. Wit and humor, good fellowship, rever- 
ence for religion, civic patriotism, championship of needy 
causes and persons, — these he displayed through a worthy 
career." 

And this from the Boston Globe: "Mr. Gargan's gen- 
erous, gifted nature always was actively identified in 
sentiment and effort with the broadest current of life in 



72 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Boston. . . . He was a great orator in matter and man- 
ner of speech, and the strong influence which he exercised 
in political affairs was never misdirected in factional 
alliance. In public, private, and professional life he 
united learning with wit and enthusiasm with good 
humor in a degree that commanded universal esteem 
and affection." 

The Boston Journal wrote: "The parents of the Hon. 
Thomas J. Gargan, who died in Berlin yesterday, came to 
Boston in the early part of the last century, seeking 
opportunities denied them in Ireland. They found peace 
and prosperity here; and, without abating one jot of 
the loyalty due the faith and the land of his forefathers, 
the son became one of Boston's foremost citizens. . . . Mr. 
Gargan's life was another striking instance of fine per- 
sonal development turned to good service for the com- 
munity in general. It was the life of a model citizen, 
clean and strong on all sides. Out of such lives the lesson 
for the rising generation must be taken and taught." 

And the Boston Post: "His death is a loss to the city 
and the State, and to the profession in which he held 
a distinguished place; and to the many who knew the 
warmth of his kindly nature and the sincerity of his soul 
it comes as a grief. . . . His name is associated with 
three who have gone before, — with Patrick A. Collins, 
John Boyle O'Reilly, and James Jeffrey Roche. These 
three were friends through the sympathy of genius as 
well as by temperament; and, while each gave much to 
the honor of the community in which they held citizen- 
ship, the work done by Mr. Gargan was of longer con- 
tinuance and the service of perhaps greater permanence. 
Mr. Gargan possessed the gift of oratory in a remarkable 

73 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



degree. He was one of the most brilliant public speakers 
that Boston has produced." 

Again quoting the Herald: "To-day the mortal re- 
mains of the late Thomas J. Gargan will be interred in 
Holyhood, where repose those of O'Reilly, Collins, Roche, 
Riley, and other notable representatives of their race 
who have passed on. A brilliant galaxy, each gifted 
with distinctive characteristics, but all endowed with 
qualities of mind, heart, and spirit that have left a deep 
impression on the records of their day and generation." 

Said the Springfield Republican: "The mourning in 
Boston for the passing of Thomas J. Gargan is both gen- 
eral and genuine. He had not only a racial love for good 
oratory, but he joined to the oratorical gift sane, calm, 
and broad composition, which made his public speeches 
the expression of thought and not merely words grace- 
fully conceived. He was a straightforward character, a 
vigilant and well-informed citizen, governed always by a 
high sense of honor both personal and public. He was 
a well-read and more than usually full-rounded man. . . . 
He was, indeed, a worthy and representative citizen, not 
only of Boston, but of the State." 



So throughout the State from many sources 
came the praises of a man whose life had been 
one of honor and service, and expressions of 
genuine sorrow for his death; and in a majority 
of instances his name and work were coupled 
with those of his dead friends, O'Reilly, Roche, 
and Collins, for they had much in common, 

74 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



even though their genius and talent found ex- 
pression in different ways. They had worked 
together in life; they had labored highly and 
honorably for the race that bore them and the 
Republic they had made their home; and they 
sleep together forever in the hallowed pre- 
cincts of Holyhood. 



75 



ADDRESS 

DELIVERED IN MUSIC HALL, BOSTON, MAY 8, 1 884, 
PROTESTING AGAINST THE CONFISCATION OF 
THE COLLEGE OF THE CONGREGATION OF THE 
PROPAGANDA IN ROME BY THE ITALIAN GOV- 
ERNMENT. 

Mr. Chairman and Ladies and Gentlemen: 

We have assembled this evening to give utter- 
ance to a protest and an expression of our indig- 
nation at that which every right-thinking man 
must feel is a wanton disregard of the rights 
of private property on the part of the Italian 
government, as shown in the attempt to con- 
fiscate the property of the Congregation of the 
Propaganda in Rome. As individuals, we must 
view with alarm the action of a government 
that not only denies the right of the heir to his 
inheritance, — a necessary consequence of the 
principles of labor, — but aims a blow at labor 
itself, which is not only physical, but of the 
mind, and declares that its products and accu- 
mulations, if contributed for the uses of religion 
and charity, shall not be respected. As Cath- 
olics, we would be abject cowards if we did not 
assert our manhood and declare against such 

7 6 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



doctrines; as citizens of an enlightened country, 
we would be false to the principles of our gov- 
ernment if we did not repudiate the methods 
of the robber barons of the thirteenth century 
and the morals that teach that "might is right." 
We are here, therefore, to appeal to that great 
tribunal of the nineteenth century, — public 
opinion. The day of the divine right of kings 
to plunder their subjects and to take property 
that is held in trust for Christian civilization has 
passed never to return. This is the day of the 
divine right of the people to protest; and no 
statesman nor government can afford to dis- 
regard that protest which comes from men 
uncontrolled by prejudices or personal influ- 
ences and which has behind it the public con- 
science. We simply ask as citizens of the 
United States that impartial justice be ren- 
dered by the Italian government. 

Do we as Catholics make an unreasonable 
demand? Let us examine the facts and define 
our position. 

In the year 1622, two years after the landing 
of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Pope Gregory XV. 
instituted the Congregation of the Propaganda 
at Rome. For what objects ? Not to train men 
in the arts of war, nor to foster the military 
vanity of a people, not to educate men in state- 
craft, not to stimulate their ambition for 

77 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



worldly honors. Oh, no! for no such objects 
did Gregory XIII. conceive the idea of the 
Congregation of the Propaganda, instituted by 
Gregory XV. and completed by Urban VIII. 
Its object was to so train men that they might 
fulfil the Scriptural injunction and go forth to 
teach all nations, preaching the gospel of the 
Redeemer, — men whose sole object in life was 
the greater honor and glory of their Creator. 
Gregory XIII. appreciated the importance of 
the discovery of the Western Continent and 
the new road to India and Cathay by the way 
of Cape of Good Hope. The Catholic Church, 
ever in the vanguard of civilization, sent its 
missionary priests with the Spanish and Portu- 
guese expeditions. Bernal Diaz and our own 
historian Prescott tell us that, while the rest- 
less Cortez, with insatiable ambition, was car- 
rying the flag of Spain to the heart of Mexico, 
the Catholic missionaries were doing much to 
alleviate the suffering of the natives, too often 
the victims of military cruelty. In the North 
Champlain had claimed all the territory north 
of the St. Lawrence for the King of France, and 
Parkman, our own townsman, has portrayed for 
us in his admirable historical series examples of 
heroism, devotion, bravery, and saintliness un- 
rivalled in the history of all the ages. Who can 
read his vivid descriptions and not feel a thrill 



78 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of admiration for the Chevalier Champlain, the 
man of noble spirit, the statesman, the soldier 
to whom "the saving of a soul was worth more 
than the conquest of an empire"? Who can 
read unmoved the story of the lion-hearted 
Father Brebeuf, the delicate and tenderly 
reared Parisian, Father Lallemant, soldiers of 
the cross, companions in that journey of a 
thousand miles through trackless forests to the 
country of the Hurons, where they gave up 
their lives as martyrs to the cause of Christi- 
anity and Christian civilization? And those 
brave Fathers, Davost and Daniel and De 
Noue! And Father Jogues, the magnificent, 
who, wounded and maimed by the Iroquois, 
rescued and taken to France by a Dutch trader, 
obtained a dispensation to cross the ocean once 
more and win the martyr's crown in the valley 
of the Mohawk. 

The visible head of the Catholic Church be- 
held in these efforts of the societies of France 
and Spain for the propagation of the faith 
the importance and necessity of a university 
at Rome where men from all parts of the world 
might receive the necessary education and 
training to fit them to teach all nations. Hence 
the establishment of the College of the Propa- 
ganda which has made all nations its debtors 
and which all nations have liberally contrib- 

79 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



uted to maintain. For two centuries and a half 
by the pious offerings from the labor of all na- 
tions this great institution has gone on doing 
its great work. To give an adequate idea of 
what it has accomplished would be to attempt 
to give the history of Christian civilization 
during that period. Its graduates in the garb 
of missionary priests have penetrated all lands, 
and sought, not the abode of luxury, but the 
haunts of misery and vice, carrying hope and 
consolation with them; and, while their knowl- 
edge has not been of this world, by their obser- 
vation and knowledge obtained in China, India, 
and other lands, they have contributed to the 
advancement of the arts and sciences in Eng- 
land and America. The Italian government is 
now aiming a death blow at this institution, — an 
institution that has done more for democracy 
than any other institution of learning in the 
world. In its schools and academic halls meet 
men of every race, color, and language. It tol- 
erates no castes, no exclusiveness, no narrow 
prejudices. All meet on the plane of equality; 
and no more fitting tribute was ever paid to 
the Propaganda than that pronounced by the 
eulogist of Toussaint L'Ouverture, a name ever 
honored by the Catholic Church as it is revered 
by all lovers of liberty. Our own great Boston 
orator, whose lips also are closed in death (who, 

80 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



were he living and with us in the flesh, would 
have been on this platform to-night to give 
utterance, as he alone could, to his indignation 
at the monstrous injustice of the action of the 
Italian government), Wendell Phillips, on one 
occasion, speaking of his experience in Europe, 
said : — 

I entered the Eternal City and went to St. Peter's. I 
listened to the music, and, as it died away, standing, as 
I was, behind a massive pillar which obscured my view, 
I caught the words of a sermon delivered in faultless 
English, and, moving forward to catch a view of the 
speaker, I beheld there in the pulpit of St. Peter's a full- 
blooded negro preaching the Gospel of Christ, and I said 
nowhere else could I have witnessed such a scene but in 
the Catholic Church. All honor to such democracy! 
All honor to the Propaganda for its grand work in behalf 
of Christian civilization! 

This institution, the property of all the Cath- 
olic world, the Italian government proposes to 
confiscate by virtue of the act of July 7, 1866, 
which declares that all congregations which 
enjoy community life are no longer recognized 
in the kingdom and are suppressed, and by 
the later law of August, 1867, that such property 
shall be turned into the treasury, and that the 
net revenue only shall revert to the original 
owners. The Italian Court of Cassation in its 
construction of these acts says that this may be 

81 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



done. We say this is legal robbery, and, while 
we may admit that the Italian Court of Cassa- 
tion has not the power of the United States Su- 
preme Court, and can only pass upon the con- 
struction of the statutes, and not upon their 
constitutionality, we maintain that their con- 
struction is not sound and fair, as it was ex- 
pressly and solemnly avowed by King Victor 
Emmanuel that these laws were not aimed at the 
Propaganda, as there is, strictly speaking, no 
community life in that institution. The prompt 
action of President Arthur and Mr. Astor, the 
American Minister at Rome, have saved the 
American College from the provisions of these 
acts. They have been promptly declared ex- 
empt. Justice demands that the whole property 
of the Propaganda be declared exempt. We pro- 
test against this attempted confiscation in the 
name of religion, in the name of culture, in the 
name of civil liberty, in the name of Christian 
civilization, and condemn it as worthy only of 
the age of the Goth and Vandal. We know that 
in this protest we give utterance to the eternal 
principles of justice, which are above and beyond 
all law, and which the Divine Ruler of this Uni- 
verse has implanted in all our hearts; and I 
but echo your thoughts and feelings when I say 
this cosmopolitan institution must be saved 
from the rapacity of the Italian government. 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



While in America Harvard and Yale and some 
of our Catholic colleges may reflect our opin- 
ions and speak for America, Trinity and May- 
nooth for Ireland, Oxford and Cambridge for 
England, Paris for France, Stockholm for Nor- 
way and Sweden, Heidelberg, Leipsic, and Bonn 
for Germany, the College of the Propaganda 
knows no boundaries of states or kingdoms or 
empires, but belongs to all mankind. 



83 



ORATION. 

(July 4, 1885.) 

Mr. Mayor and Fellow-Citizens of Boston: — 

One hundred and nine years ago this morning 
George III. was King of Great Britain and 
Ireland and of the British Colonies in North 
America; yet before the setting of the sun on 
that day the fairest portion of his North Ameri- 
can colonies had forsworn their allegiance and 
declared their independence. That proclama- 
tion of independence they made good by seven 
long and painful years of unequal war. We 
rejoice and congratulate each other that we 
have lived to see the auspicious opening of 
another Independence Day. The large au- 
dience assembled here; the multitudes that have 
suspended their ordinary labors and fill the 
streets of this great city, and of every city, 
town, and hamlet in the several States and 
territories of the Union; the thousands of faces 
aglow with joy and sympathy, — attest and pro- 
claim that the day and the events which it 
commemorates have left a deep impression in 
our hearts, and that this generation of Ameri- 
cans has not forgotten the teachings of the 

84 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



fathers. It is fitting and appropriate that, on 
the anniversary of such a memorable day in 
our annals, we should indulge somewhat in 
retrospection. The English-speaking people 
have had two great epochs in their history 
which materially affected their liberties, — not 
only their liberties, but the liberties and gov- 
ernments of the civilized world. The first 
epoch was in the early part of the thirteenth 
century, when the barons of England deter- 
mined to resist the doctrine of the divine right 
of kings, and the assumption that the king 
could do no wrong. Several conferences had 
been held with King John, and finally the 
barons assembled at St. Paul's, in London, 
where Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, who had been appointed by the pope to 
that see, despite the opposition of the king, 
called them to order, and read to them, and 
commented upon the provisions of the Great 
Charter of England. They answered by loud 
acclamations of approval, and Langton admin- 
istered the oath by which they bound them- 
selves to each other "to conquer or die in 
defence of their liberties." The terms of the 
charter were at first indignantly refused by 
King John. He exclaimed, after hearing it 
read, "They might as well have demanded my 
crown." But the assemblage at Stamford, in 



85 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Easter week of the year 121 5, of the barons and 
two thousand knights, their esquires and fol- 
lowers, with Robert Fitzwalter at their head, 
and the march to and occupation of London 
by the barons, brought the king to a sense of 
the real condition of existing affairs, and a time 
and place were appointed for a conference. 
At Runnymede the king met the barons. 

On one side stood Fitzwalter and the ma- 
jority of the barons and nobility of England, 
on the other side the king and eight bishops 
and fifteen gentlemen as his trusty advisers; 
and there the king most unwillingly signed the 
great charter of English liberties, — signed for 
you and for me and for all men. Those liber- 
ties are now the common property of all nations. 
The charter provided that the subject should be 
secure in his person, liberty, and property; 
that he should not be deprived of either with- 
out due process of law; that the courts should 
no longer follow the person of the king, but be 
held in some certain place; confirmed to all 
cities, boroughs, and towns the enjoyment of 
their ancient liberties according to the terms of 
their charters, and reaffirmed the right of trial 
by jury. Looking down six centuries of time, 
enjoying as we do the full blessings of liberty, 
we can appreciate the importance of that day's 
meeting at Runnymede. There not only King 

86 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



John, but all kings were, for the first time, 
defeated by the people; there the first real 
battle was fought; there the first real victory 
won. The principles embodied in the charter 
were not new. The English people were simply 
demanding that the king should observe the 
prerogatives of the fathers which a succession 
of kings had gradually usurped. Though the 
charter had been signed, the battle was not 
ended. It was not supposed that its terms 
would be cheerfully observed by King John, 
who believed that it had been wrung from him 
by force. Yet he was too diplomatic to show 
his displeasure openly; and, while he appeared 
to conform, he secretly intrigued and en- 
deavored to nullify the provisions of the 
charter. Nor were his successors any the less 
tenacious of what they considered their kingly 
rights. It required no less than thirty-eight 
successive ratifications to give the provisions 
of the charter the full force and effect of law. 
But, the people deeming therein was the expres- 
sion of their just rights, the great charter pre- 
vailed, and was the precursor of the American 
Declaration of Independence, which marked 
the second great epoch in the history of English- 
speaking people. As the Great Charter was the 
dawn, so the Declaration was the full noon of 
Liberty's day. 



87 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



From Runnymede to Philadelphia was jive 
and a half centuries, — centuries full of toil and 
trouble and battle for the right. Every privi- 
lege which we enjoy has been obtained by 
strife. The strife and battle are not equally 
distributed. One generation battles through all 
its life for a principle: the next enjoys the 
fruits of the battles in peace, and too often 
undervalues the sacrifices of its predecessors. 
So during those centuries in England there 
were alternate periods of battle and peace to 
preserve and maintain the Great Charter, and 
to acquire the still further right of the people 
to assemble in parliament and make their own 
laws. One of the advantages which accrued 
from the Norman conquest was the insistence 
of the right of local self-government, which the 
Normans brought from home, and to which 
they clung with great tenacity. That custom 
was, after the last mass on Sunday, and the 
congregation were dismissed from religious ser- 
vice, to assemble on the common or green in 
front of the church, and discuss the questions 
of new roads, local rates, and taxes, and all 
matters appertaining to the material welfare of 
the people of the parish. Here we find the 
first trace of that democratic institution which 
spread through many parts of England, and 
which the colonists brought over with them to 

88 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Massachusetts, and which was the origin of, 
and is known in our day as, the New England 
town-meeting. The Massachusetts Bay colo- 
nists modified the Norman town-meeting to 
this extent: they attempted to establish a 
kind of theocracy, — a government of Church 
and State. In the Plymouth colony, as a con- 
dition of receiving the franchise, the candidate 
must have been of " sober and peaceable con- 
versation, orthodox in the fundamentals of 
religion. " The government was a strange ad- 
mixture of the Old and the New Testament 
and a combination of the Hebrew and the 
English common law. But the later colonists 
brought with them substantially the govern- 
ment by town-meeting, — the germ of our whole 
system of democratic government. 

The events which led up to the American 
Revolution and the Declaration of Independence 
have been so often repeated by the great orators 
of the Republic, — and great they were; our 
poets have sung of them in majestic verse; our 
writers have lovingly given us all the details 
and the inner lives of the principal actors in 
that great dramatic epoch of our history: so, 
on each recurring Fourth day of July, the story 
has for us a new interest, a fresh charm. We 
see, as it were, before us, in imagination, the 
New England colonists landing at Plymouth 



89 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



and Massachusetts Bay; the men from the 
north of Ireland peopling New Hampshire; 
the Quakers at Pennsylvania; Lord Baltimore 
and his English and Irish Catholic colony at 
Maryland; the Cavaliers in Virginia and the 
Carolinas, and Oglethorpe at Georgia, — all brave, 
sturdy men, planting colonies that continued to 
grow and flourish despite the indifference and 
neglect of the English government. "Owing her 
nothing, but through a wise and salutary neg- 
lect, generous nature was suffered to take her 
own way to perfection." We see on the north 
and west the efforts of France to establish a 
new empire along the St. Lawrence and the 
great lakes; Champlain and Montmorenci, with 
intrepid courage and daring, by exploration and 
occupation, extending the boundaries of New 
France; La Salle and Joliet discovering the 
Mississippi River from the north; and the final 
efforts of all the French commanders to push 
eastward the boundaries, until the clash of 
arms came which ended at Quebec in the death 
of Wolfe and Montcalm, and forever ended the 
dream of the empire of New France on the North 
American continent. 

With the peace of Paris the flag of England 
floated over a vast and princely domain, ex- 
tending from the frozen north to the Gulf of 
Mexico, from the Atlantic on the east to the 



90 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Mississippi River on the west; yet the Te Deum 
had been scarcely finished at St. Paul's, the 
pealing of the bells or the echoes from the 
salvos of artillery at London ceased, in honor 
of the ratification of that treaty, when the king 
and his ministry began to dismember the em- 
pire which had cost them so much of blood and 
treasure to acquire. 

In 1763 George III. and his ministers talked 
of America as the brightest jewel in the British 
crown. But the Hanoverian King of England 
still believed with Louis XIV., "I am the 
State"; and, without examination of the colo- 
nial charters, he demanded that Parliament 
should tax the colonists for the expenses of the 
late war. But the king had yet much to learn 
of the temper and character of his American 
subjects. The days of King John and the 
divine rights of kings had long since vanished. 
Rumors of the attempted imposition of taxes 
by the British Parliament had crossed the seas, 
and early in 1764, at the May town-meeting 
in Faneuil Hall, before it was known that the 
Stamp Act had passed, Samuel Adams read 
these instructions from Boston to her repre- 
sentatives: " There is no room for delay if 
taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our 
having a legal representation where they are 
laid. Are we not reduced from the character 



91 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of free subjects to the miserable state of tribu- 
tary slaves? We claim British rights, not by 
charter only; we are born to them. Use your 
endeavors that the weight of the other North 
American colonies may be added to this prov- 
ince, that by united application all may obtain 
redress." We know how futile were the efforts 
of the provinces to obtain redress. It did seem 
upon the repeal of the Stamp Act that the 
British ministry had a lucid interval, and was 
preparing to adopt a statesman-like policy. It 
was a brief interval, indeed, and the breach 
gradually widened. The British House of Com- 
mons refused with scorn even so much as to 
receive petitions from the colonies of Connecti- 
cut, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Carolina, 
remonstrating against the passage of unjust tax 
laws. Such being the temper of the British 
Parliament, the colonists had no alternative but 
resistance. 

In 1765 the delegates from nine colonies met 
at New York. From South Carolina came the 
message: "There ought to be no New England 
man, no New Yorker known on the continent, 
but all of us Americans." The people did 
not feel that they were rebelling against authori- 
ties or law: they believed that the Crown, the 
Ministry, and the Parliament were violating 
their ancient charters. They were not refusing 

92 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



to pay a just proportion of a war debt: they 
wanted to assess that debt upon their own 
people, according to the local laws and usages 
of the colonies, or to have representation in the 
general Parliament. The colonists had few 
friends in England: there were Chatham and 
Fox, Colonel Barre and Burke, — a brave minor- 
ity in Parliament, — who seemed to comprehend 
the gravity of the situation and the magnitude 
of the task the king and his ministers had un- 
dertaken. In vain did Mr. Burke plead for 
reconciliation with America. Addressing the 
House of Commons, he said: "The use of force 
alone is but temporary; it may subdue for a 
moment, but it does not remove the necessity 
of subduing again, and a nation is not gov- 
erned which is perpetually to be conquered." 
Mr. Burke subsequently moved the resolution 
that the colonies ought to have representation 
in the High Court of Parliament, and, finding 
all his efforts voted down, concluded: "I have 
this comfort, that in every stage of the Ameri- 
can affairs I have steadily opposed the meas- 
ures that have produced the confusion, and 
may bring on the destruction, of this empire. 
I have gone so far as to risk a proposal of my 
own. If I cannot give peace to my country, I 
give it to my conscience." 

The wisest statesman and philosopher of his 

93 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



time, whose fame has outlived that of all his 
contemporaries, foresaw that war was inevitable 
if the king and ministry persisted. George III. 
was honestly consistent in two things: he cor- 
dially hated the North American colonists and 
the Catholics. Appended to Lord Brougham's 
"Biographical Sketches of Lord North" are 
some autograph notes of the king, which give 
us an insight to his character. "The times 
certainly require," writes the king, "the con- 
currence of all who wish to prevent anarchy. 
I have no wish but the prosperity of my own 
dominion; therefore I must look upon all who 
would not heartily assist me as bad men, as 
well as bad subjects." He reasons: "I wish 
nothing but good, therefore every man who does 
not agree with me is a traitor and a scoundrel." 
And in this category he placed all his North 
American colonists, as well as the great 
author of "Reflections on the Revolution in 
France." We can see at this distance of time 
and in the present light that reconciliation was 
impossible. George III. considered himself 
anointed by a divine commission, therefore his 
rebellious subjects were to be flogged into sub- 
mission; and that he had the support of his 
country is shown by the address in favor of 
coercing the colonies, which was carried in 
Parliament by a vote of 304 to 105 in the 

94 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Commons and by 104 to 29 in the House of 
Lords. We had as few friends in 1775 in 
Parliament as we had in the dark days of 1862, 
when a long list of fifty-one dukes, noble lords, 
marquises, and members of Parliament sub- 
scribed millions of dollars for the bonds of the 
Southern Confederacy, — that the American idea 
of government founded upon manhood suffrage 
might be destroyed. The vote of Parliament 
meant war, and, as Patrick Henry predicted, 
"The next breeze from the North brought to 
Virginia the clash of resounding arms." The 
Continental Congress was called together at 
Philadelphia. They assembled not in pomp 
and power, as did the barons at Runnymede, 
yet were no less determined. Two engage- 
ments had been fought during the sitting. 
The armies were in the field, and many yet hoped 
for reconciliation. The debates in Congress were 
upon matters of serious import to the colonies. 
No wiser, more patriotic, or braver men were 
ever gathered together than the men of the 
Continental Congress. To test the sense of 
that Congress, on the 7th day of June, 1776, 
Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, arose in his 
place, and offered this resolution: "Resolved, 
That these United Colonies are, and of right 
ought to be, free and independent States; that 
they are absolved from all allegiance to the 

95 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



British Crown, and that all political connection 
between them and the State of Great Britain is, 
and ought to be, totally dissolved, and that a 
plan of confederation be prepared and trans- 
mitted to the respective colonies for their con- 
sideration and approbation." In that resolution 
was epitomized the Declaration of Independence : 
it was adopted on the nth of June, and two 
committees appointed, — one on the Declaration 
of Independence, the other to prepare Articles 
of Union. 

At the head of the Committee on Declaration 
was Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, then in his 
thirty-third year and the* author of the great 
declaration of the rights of man. On the 28th 
day of June was achieved the great naval vic- 
tory over Sir Peter Parker, at Charleston, and 
on the same day the Committee on the Declara- 
tion of Independence presented its report. As 
the delegates from Pennsylvania and New York 
had not received their powers or instructions to 
vote for it, action was delayed until the 4th day 
of July. The vote was by colonies, each 
colony casting a single vote. It was a long and 
anxious day, and late in the evening John 
Hancock, president of the Continental Con- 
gress, announced that the declaration had been 
carried, and the Fourth of July became forever 
memorable and glorious in our annals. The 



96 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



New York delegation were not authorized to 
vote for independence until the 9th of July, 
and did not sign until August 2. The Penn- 
sylvania vote was by a minority of the whole 
delegation. The doctrine "that all men are 
created equal, and have certain inalienable 
rights," had about it a touch of sublimity. 
The doctrine "that government rests upon the 
consent of the governed" startled all Europe. 
"Audacious, foolhardy men," exclaim the states- 
men and philosophers of Europe, "to imagine 
that a government can be successful where all 
the people have a voice! Such a doctrine we 
might expect from the lips of Thomas Jefferson, 
youthful and inexperienced, and tinctured with 
all the heresies of France, where he so recently 
sojourned; and that radical, Sam Adams, we 
are not surprised at finding him among the 
signers of the declaration. But what folly and 
madness have seized the conservative men of 
the colonies, that they dare trust their lives and 
property under such a form of government?" 
At a later period Macaulay prophesied "that 
soon the poor in the United States, worse than 
another inroad of Goths and Vandals, would 
begin a general plunder of the rich." Scholars 
and pessimists have flouted universal suffrage, 
and condemned our great charter of the Fourth 
of July. Carlyle blasphemously said, "De- 

9/ 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



mocracy will prevail when men believe the vote 
of Judas as good as that of his Master." Yet, 
notwithstanding all these sneers and prophecies, 
this government has lived one century, and has 
entered into the second with more strength and 
vigor than any nation on the globe. Its public 
credit stands unchallenged; it has increased in 
wealth and population to a marvellous degree. 
During the first century of its existence it 
has witnessed the revolution of 1789 in France, 
the destruction of the Bastile, the Consulate, the 
first empire, the Bourbon restoration, and the 
revolution of 1830, Louis Philippe, and again 
the rising of "'48," the Coup D'etat, the second 
empire and its fall, the Commune and the 
present so-called Republic in France, the Car- 
bonari in Italy, and the revolutions in Germany. 
And, if England has escaped the war and misery 
of her Continental neighbors, it is for the reason 
that her statesmen, profiting by American ex- 
perience and noting the progress of events on 
this side of the Atlantic, have made immense 
concession to the popular will. Catholic eman- 
cipation, the repeal of the corn-laws, the re- 
form act, the disestablishment of the Irish 
Church, the doubling of the franchise, and the 
more recent bill, by which more than 2,000,000 
new voters have been added to the lists, — 
measures, all of them which were, when origi- 



98 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



nally proposed, denounced as revolutionary, — 
have been adopted, and are now part of the 
constitution of the British empire, all of the 
so-called strong governments in each decade 
during the last half-century having been ad- 
vancing towards the doctrine of the American 
Declaration of Independence, that "all govern- 
ment rests upon the consent of the governed." 
When the fathers of this Republic founded the 
government upon the right of the people as 
opposed to the doctrine of the divine right of 
kings, they were not mere theorists and rash 
experimenters : there must have been men in the 
Continental Congress who had thought seri- 
ously and soundly upon this question, — men 
not unfamiliar with the teachings of the early 
philosophers and doctors; for Saint Thomas 
Aquinas, the great doctor, says "that the ruler 
has not power of making law, except inasmuch 
as he bears the person of the multitude." And 
Sir Thomas More, in spite of Henry VIII., 
maintained that the king held his crown by 
parliamentary title; and Suarez taught "that 
whenever civil power is found in one man, or 
legitimate prince, by ordinary right, it came 
from the people and community, either proxi- 
mately or remotely; it cannot be otherwise 
possessed so as to be just." Bellarmine con- 
cludes, "Divine right gave the power to no 

99 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



particular man; it therefore gave the power to 
the multitude." The men of the Continental 
Congress were not Socialists or Communists: 
they recognized fully the rights of individual 
property, and had faith that the people would 
respect and protect these rights. Having once 
fully adopted the principles of the Declara- 
tion, the States in their Constitutions recog- 
nized the right of the people to participate. 
Maryland, which was the first of the colonies 
to grant civil and religious liberty, was the 
first State to proclaim universal suffrage and 
to introduce the most democratic forms into 
her whole government. De Tocqueville says, 
"When a nation begins to modify the elective 
qualification it may easily be foreseen that, 
sooner or later, all qualification will be abol- 
ished." It is useless, then, to discuss problems 
concerning and difficulties affecting our form 
of government upon any other basis than that 
the people govern. It is fashionable and custom- 
ary in our day, at social-science meetings, at 
the clubs, and at conventions, to decry uni- 
versal suffrage. But it is an established fact, 
and the people are the masters. Mr. Disraeli 
truthfully said, in "Vivian Grey," "The people, 
sir, are not always right; the people, Mr. Grey, 
are not often wrong." The people carried us 
grandly through the Revolution, and on all great 

ioo 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



questions affecting our institutions they have 
been instinctively right. 

On the very question that finally threatened 
the destruction of the Union, the people in the 
colonies early anticipated danger. As in 1772, 
upon the petitions from all parts of the colony, 
the Legislature of Virginia memorialized the 
King of Great Britain upon the dangers of 
slavery, and expressed the desire that the slave- 
trade might be abolished. The king answered, 
that upon pain of his highest displeasure the 
importation of slaves should not be obstructed. 
Yet in the very same year the highest court 
of judicature in England decided the celebrated 
Somersett case, that no man could make a 
slave of another. While the British orators and 
statesmen indulged in copious rhetoric about 
the freedom of a single slave, and boasted that 
the moment his foot touched the shores of 
England he stood forth redeemed and disen- 
thralled, the government continued to sanction 
the traffic that sent thousands into bondage and 
entailed untold misery upon posterity. As indi- 
cating the opinion of the people of the colonies 
at the time of the adoption of the Federal Con- 
stitution, it may be mentioned that there were 
abolition societies in Maryland, Virginia, New 
York, and Pennsylvania. James Madison, in 
the constitutional convention, strongly opposed 

101 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



the proposition, coming from a Northern dele- 
gate, for the extension of the time for the 
abolition of the slave-trade. Luther Martin and 
William Pinkney, of Maryland, in the House 
of Delegates, and Mr. Iredell, of North Caro- 
lina, were all in favor of the early removal of 
what they considered a great danger threaten- 
ing the Republic. The latter said, in the State 
convention of North Carolina, "When the 
entire abolition of slavery takes place it will be 
an event which must be pleasing to every 
generous mind and to every friend of human 
nature." 

The framers of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, keenly alive to the popular sentiment, 
intended the abolition of the slave-trade in that 
omitted clause, which Mr. Jefferson said "was 
struck out in complaisance to South Carolina 
and Georgia, and not without tenderness, too, 
to some of our northern brethren, who, though 
they had few slaves themselves, were very con- 
siderable carriers of them to others." The 
framers of our constitutional government, de- 
spairing of uniting the colonies under the Federal 
Union, and realizing, in the language of Burke, 
that "all government, indeed every human 
benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every 
prudent act, is founded on compromise and 
barter," were forced to accept some compro- 

102 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



mises, and recognized the existence of slavery, 
though every Southern man in the Continental 
Congress voted for the Ordinance of 1787, 
which made all the territory north and west of 
the Ohio River free territory forever. 

Montesquieu wrote, "If a republic is small 
it is destroyed by a foreign power; if it is large 
it is destroyed by internal disorder." But he 
wrote in 1747, before the railway and the tele- 
graph had annihilated time and space. Our 
history and growth have thus far disproved the 
truth of this assertion, yet we had that within 
our body politic which almost destroyed the 
Republic. 

The debates in Congress of 1820, and the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, gave us 
more than a generation of fierce and bitter 
agitation on the slavery question. On the one 
side were urged the arguments for the Con- 
stitution, the law, and logic; on the other side 
were humanity and the people. The latter pre- 
vailed, as they have in every great struggle. 

" Ever the truth comes uppermost 
And ever is justice done." 

To accomplish that justice, this government 
was shaken to its foundations; and yet, when 
the war came upon us, where did we find the 
courageous men, the brave and willing hearts, 

103 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



ready to die in defence of country? In the 
ranks of the common people. As Wendell 
Phillips scathingly remarked, through all the 
crisis "there was nothing so cowardly in the 
Northern States as a million dollars, except two 
millions." Do not misunderstand me as imply- 
ing that the men of wealth did not respond 
nobly and generously during the war to the call 
of the government; yet truth compels us to 
admit that in the beginning they had less faith 
in the government than was displayed by the 
masses of the people. This government that, 
according to the predictions of the philoso- 
phers and statesmen of Europe, was to crumble 
and disappear at the first sign of internal dis- 
order, through four years of terrible civil war 
proved itself surprisingly strong. Of the 23,- 
000,000 of population in the Northern States, 
one in eight, or 3,000,000, took up arms in 
defence of the government and the Union. In 
the last year of the war they cheerfully acqui- 
esced in the expenditure of $1,000,000,000, and 
as cheerfully submitted to the increased burden 
of taxation consequent upon this debt. And 
when at length, after the long, dark night came 
the dawn, and the commander of the Union 
armies had received the surrender of the last 
army in the field against the government, in 
the hour of national rejoicing the assassin's 

104 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



arm struck down the people's ruler, then came 
the supreme test of this government of the 
people. Under any of the so-called strong gov- 
ernments of Europe, had such a catastrophe 
happened, the victorious general of the army- 
would have been proclaimed dictator and have 
founded a line of kings; but in this Republic 
the doctrine of the Declaration of Independence 
was not forgotten, — "That all government rests 
upon the consent of the governed," — and the 
duly elected Vice-President of the United States 
took the oath of office and became President^ 
as prescribed by the Constitution and laws. 

Another inspiring example, that strengthens 
our faith in the people, was given in 1876, when 
both parties claimed to have elected the Presi- 
dent: one, because they had possession of the 
government, and desired to retain it; the other, 
for the reason that they had a majority of the 
votes, and had elected their candidate. Was it 
the presence of the commander-in-chief of the 
army, or the concentration of troops at Wash- 
ington that brought a peaceful solution of the 
question? No! It was the assemblage of the 
people, regardless of party ties, in mass meet- 
ings in all the large cities and towns of the 
country, that by the power of public opinion 
compelled Congress to vote for the bill creat- 
ing the electoral commission. The people, by 

105 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



their voice and action, demonstrated that love 
of country was more potent than love of party. 
Let us not speak doubtingly nor disparagingly 
of the people's judgment when we reflect upon 
the action of the fifteen eminent judicial minds 
that formed the commission. Thus far, through 
the blessings of Divine Providence and trust 
in the people, we have maintained our govern- 
ment and kept the Union whole. We are not 
unmindful of the dangers that beset our course. 
We realize "that early and provident fear is 
the mother of safety." I do not believe that 
danger lies in the direction which so many 
predict. We must take counsel of our ex- 
perience, and not our prejudice. 

Mr. Curtis, the editor of Harper's Weekly, 
in speaking of the dangers threatening the Re- 
public, said, in his oration at Concord in 1875, 
"Massachusetts has a large population, with no 
hereditary traditions connecting them with the 
soil." If he meant to imply that a very large 
portion of the population of Massachusetts do 
not trace their descent from Puritan ancestry, 
that is true. But, if he apprehends danger from 
that source, can he have read the history of 
his country aright? Can he believe that we, 
who have walked the streets of Boston for 
nearly forty years, do not love our native city? 
— we, who remember that in these same streets 

106 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



walked Sir Harry Vane, the broadest and most 
Catholic man of his time; we, who were familiar 
with the history of Faneuil Hall before we knew 
our alphabet, and knew the story of the Old 
South and the tea in Boston Harbor ere we had 
conquered the multiplication table, whose in- 
fant feet had time and again passed the old 
North Church, and looked up searchingly at 
the old tower for Paul Revere's lanterns, and 
ascended Copp's Hill to look upon Charles- 
town, and, before we were out of jackets, 
stood on Bunker Hill under the shadow of the 
tall gray shaft, and with uncovered head and 
reverent mien looked upon the spot where 
Warren fell; we, who have walked these streets 
with prouder tread because of Sam Adams and 
James Otis, the elder Quincy and sturdy John 
Adams; we, who have had glimpses of the stal- 
wart form of Webster, the defender and ex- 
pounder of the Constitution, who have listened 
to the polished tones of Everett, the matchless 
eloquence of Choate, and heard Sumner thun- 
der forth his fierce denunciations of the slave 
power, and again, during the native American 
excitement of the " Fifties," in the face of 
popular clamor defending the rights of all 
citizens under the law; we, who heard in front 
of the Old South Church, in the early days of 
the Rebellion, the great tribune of the people, 



107 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Wendell Phillips, "the noblest Roman of them 
all," appealing to all citizens to stand by the 
government in the hour of peril. Have we been 
insensible to all these events or unmindful of 
what these men taught? No, thank God! We 
know no other country. Our love for Boston 
and Massachusetts and the Union is as strong 
and lasting as any who claim descent from 
Puritan ancestry. Had the orator so soon for- 
gotten the story of Massachusetts in the War of 
the Rebellion? The gallant soldier now on the 
Supreme Bench, whose Puritan lineage cannot 
be questioned, who marched and fought on a 
score of battlefields with these men, might have 
quieted his fears. He would, aside from his 
personal experience, have pointed to the monu- 
ments and tablets in memorial halls of the 
several towns and cities in the Commonwealth, 
on which are inscribed the names of the heroic 
dead who fell in the great war for the preserva- 
tion of the Union, and have shown him that these 
men had bequeathed a rich legacy of patriotism 
to posterity, and had left traditions to their 
children and children's children with which 
history will indissolubly bind them to the soil 
forever. 

A short time since I was in yonder historic 
town of Lexington, inhabited principally by 
agriculturists. I read upon a monument the 

1 08 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



names of those soldiers of Lexington who gave 
their lives to their country in the War of the 
Rebellion. They were twenty in number, and 
among them one may read the names of John 
O'Neil, Dennis McMahon, and Timothy Leary, 
— names certainly that did not occur in the 
" Mayflower's" list of passengers, — and so in 
more than two hundred towns in the State may 
be found such records. The rolls at the Adju- 
tant-General's office and the navy list afford 
abundant evidence that they have so identified 
themselves with the history of Massachusetts 
and the Union that they have not only tradi- 
tions, but a record which will endure to the end 
of time. 

There are some of us who still remember the 
first preparations for the great Civil War. Men 
were not inquiring about family traditions then. 
Are you for the Union? Are you willing, if 
necessary, to give your life to the cause? We 
remember one stalwart regiment that went to 
the field with no hereditary traditions, and one 
can read to-day on the monument at Gettys- 
burg erected to their memory these words: — 

The Ninth Regiment of Massachusetts volunteers 
served during three years' campaigns in Virginia, Mary- 
land, and Pennsylvania, and was in forty-two engage- 
ments, including the following, viz.: Peninsular cam- 
paign, Hanover Court-House, Seven days' battles, 

109 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, 
Mine Run, Wilderness campaign. 

What a host of patriotic memories are re- 
called by these names, even to us, the cool 
lookers-on of a later generation ! To them who 
participated in all their dire disaster, as well as 
flush of victory, think you they hold no tra- 
ditions that bind them to this country of their 
adoption? What more eloquent eulogium can 
be paid to this regiment than the concluding 
line of the inscription on the monument! — 

Whole number of casualties, 863. 

I remember at Chancellorsville in the Twenty- 
eighth Massachusetts Regiment every commis- 
sioned officer was killed or disabled; and yet 
it returned again and again to the onset, under 
command of its sergeant-major. I recall that 
13 th day of December, 1862, in front of Fred- 
ericksburg, when French's Division was almost 
annihilated. Of Meagher's Brigade of 1,200 
stalwart men, only 200 were mustered at roll- 
call at the close of the battle. One thousand 
of their companions in arms were left dead or 
wounded on the field. We call to mind one 
incident in that day's fight particularly 
honorable and glorious to Massachusetts. 
The Twenty-first Regiment of volunteers had 

no 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



marched out in line of battle. One after an- 
other of its gallant standard-bearers had been 
shot down until stepped forth Sergeant Thomas 
Plunkett. In the fierce storm of shot and shell 
both arms are shattered, but, clasping the flag 
in the reeking stumps, blinded by agony, his 
warm blood saturated the flag he saved with 
honor. He walked our streets until a few 
months ago, when he joined so many of his 
comrades who had gone before. The city of 
Worcester mourned him as one of her illustrious 
dead, and honored him as one of the bravest 
of the brave; and yet we are told men such as 
he cannot hope to leave traditions which may 
bind them or theirs to the soil. Time will 
tell some few years hence, when we, answering 
a younger generation, asking the history of his 
monument, tell them we knew him in life, had 
spoken with him; that we had seen him bear- 
ing so bravely and patiently those scars and 
mutilations that an emperor might have envied. 
And if the youth should have exclaimed, "Oh 
that I could have seen the heroic original!" 
and with interested and upturned gaze should 
ask who was the original of that statue, we 
might answer, "A poor immigrant boy; one 
who had no hereditary traditions that bound 
him to the soil." Yet, so long as will spring 
in human hearts a responsive throb at the 

in 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



rehearsal of brave deeds, his fame will be secure 
in Massachusetts. 

Men who have made great sacrifices to main- 
tain a government will not willingly permit its 
destruction. The danger to our government 
does not lie in that direction. We are in more 
danger from the indifference and, to speak 
plainly, paradoxical as it may appear, from the 
ignorance of the so-called wealthy and cultured 
classes than from the common people. My 
experience has taught me that, as a rule, the 
masses vote more understandingly than those 
who, by the accident of birth or fortune, assume 
to be their betters. Watch men listen to the 
discussions at clubs when men of wealth or 
culture and respectability meet, — men who are 
supposed to represent what is best in our Ameri- 
can life. What are the topics of conversation? 
You may learn who has the oldest Madeira in 
his cellar; the vintage of claret on the dinner- 
table; the best method of cooking a duck; the 
names of some of the painters and sculptors; 
maybe some superficial observations on art; 
the newest gossip about the opera-singers; 
who wrote the latest novel or was the winner 
of the Derby. The saving remnant may specu- 
late on the doctrines of evolution and discuss 
the unknowable cause. But let an earnest 
man, whose necessities compel him to spend his 

112 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



days in manual labor, yet desires to keep 
abreast of the times, inquire from one of these 
gentlemen: What is this bill that has passed the 
Legislature in relation to the limitation of 
taxation in cities? What are the main pro- 
visions of the new city charter; how does it 
affect citizens generally? I heard something in 
relation to a bill regulating naturalization: can 
you give me any information as to the changes 
made in the present laws? W T ho has charge of 
spending the ten millions annually assessed 
upon the citizens of Boston? What steps must 
I take to exercise the franchise? 

Gentlemen of the clubs, how many of you 
could give intelligent answers to these ques- 
tions ? 

Do you suppose that any form of government 
can exist if the brains and capital neglect their 
most important duties? If there has been a 
low tone in the public service, if there have been 
incompetency and corruption in public life, have 
you not, by your indifference and silence, stood 
by and consented? Go into the workshops of 
the mechanics; attend the meetings of the labor 
unions, the temperance, charitable, and benefit 
associations; listen, and you will hear the keen- 
est discussions of men and measures; — the effect 
of the tariff upon labor and necessaries of life, 
this leader's ability, that leader's honesty, the 

113 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



effect of this legislative enactment upon local 
rights, the policy of the new ministry in Eng- 
land, its possible effect upon our federal rela- 
tions, — all questions of public interest. Every 
man feels that he is a citizen, and has an interest 
in the government. If, now and then, dema- 
gogues mislead them, it is but for the moment, 
and you will find that the demagogues took 
advantage of some real grievance which your 
ignorance or indifference failed to notice and 
remedy. 

To quote Jeremy Taylor: "I cannot but 
think as Aristotle (Lib. 6) did of Thales and 
Anaxagoras, that they may be learned but not 
wise, or wise but not prudent, when they are 
ignorant of such things as are profitable to them. 
For suppose men know the wonders of nature, 
and the subtleties of metaphysics, and opera- 
tions mathematical, yet they cannot be prudent 
who spend themselves wholly on unprofitable 
and ineffective contemplation." — "Suppose the 
men of character and influence perform their 
duty," you may reply, "are there not other 
changes that threaten this Republic?" Yes! 
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." 
The great French writer, whom I have before 
quoted, wrote in 1830: "I am of the opinion 
that the manufacturing aristocracy which is 
growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest 

114 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



that ever existed in the world; but, at the same 
time, it is one of the most confined and least 
dangerous. Nevertheless the friends of democ- 
racy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in 
this direction, for, if ever a permanent inequal- 
ity of conditions and aristocracy again pene- 
trate into the world, it may be predicted that 
this is the gate by which they will enter." 

We know in Massachusetts and New England 
that much of our discontent has come with our 
increase in manufactures. While the people are 
benefited by large manufactories and division 
of labor, making many articles much cheaper, 
the individual laborer has been correspond- 
ingly degraded. When manufacturing enter- 
prises were under the control of individuals, 
there existed a personal interest and an indi- 
vidual sympathy between the employer and the 
employee. But, since the increase in corpora- 
tions, the man feels that he is looked upon as a 
piece of machinery, of no use except to earn 
dividends for those who live in distant towns 
or cities, with no sympathy for him, or interest 
in the local affairs of his town, except to have 
their manufacturing property bear as small a 
portion of the town tax as possible. Watch 
carefully, then, the attitude of representatives 
in the Legislature, and be not unmindful the 
corporations are by their very organizations 

115 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



grasping and controlling. A still greater danger 
than the manufacturing corporations is the 
great power concentrated in the hands of a few 
men, under the name of railroad corporations. 
The founders of this Republic wisely abolished 
the law of primogeniture. Could they have 
foreseen the coming and the growth of these 
great corporations, and their power to control 
the land by fixing the prices of the products of 
the soil, they would have guarded us in that 
direction. We are not too late, however, to pro- 
vide, by appropriate legislation in our several 
States, that, while every man shall be entitled 
to the products of his labor and his accumu- 
lated earnings during his life, the public safety, 
however, and the greater good of the greatest 
number demand that he shall not select one 
single individual in his family and bequeath to 
him his whole fortune, if in personal property. 
If the laws limiting the descent and acquisi- 
tion of real property have been wise and bene- 
ficial, — and who doubts that they have been? — 
then the time has come when there is much 
greater need for controlling the insane ambi- 
tion of men to make their heirs great and power- 
ful by placing in the hands of a single person 
an enormous fortune, which engenders discon- 
tent and inevitably tends to corruption and 
threatens the safety of our institutions. We 

116 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



cannot too jealously guard these institutions 
and the principles of our government. 

The chief provisions of our Constitution are: 
absolute freedom of religion; the right of the 
citizen to keep and bear arms; compensation 
for private property taken for public uses; 
trial by jury according to common law; and that 
all powers not delegated to the United States 
nor prohibited by the Constitution to the 
States are reserved to the States respectively 
or to the people. One of the rights reserved 
to the people was the right to manage their 
local affairs and to be secure in their chartered 
rights. This principle was insisted upon as 
early as the time of King John, and was the 
eighth article of the famous Magna Charta; 
it was always held sacred in Massachusetts 
until the Legislature of 1885 struck a blow at 
the principle which underlies our whole system 
of government. When Boston cannot govern 
herself, we may well despair of the Republic. 
We all know that an overwhelming majority 
of the people of Boston are intelligent, indus- 
trious, law-abiding citizens, capable of manag- 
ing their own local affairs; and, when they want 
legislation, they have still the right to assemble 
in mass meeting, and, if they have a grievance 
demanding legislative redress, they will make 
that grievance known. 

117 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



Law has not an atom of strength only so far 
as public opinion indorses it. Do the men who 
propose to change the heads of our civil army 
suppose that that small force of eight hundred 
men is the power which keeps this city safe? 
Absurd dreamers! Your life, goods, and good 
name rest on the law-abiding mood and self- 
respect of the people who walk the streets of 
Boston, and not upon the paltry force of eight 
hundred men. We have had narrow-minded 
legislation in Massachusetts in the past, but the 
sober second thought of the people caused its 
repeal; and I have no doubt that ere many 
years the men engaged in the attempt to strike 
down local self-government in Boston will be as 
thoroughly ashamed of their action as men are 
to acknowledge to-day that they were members 
of the Know-nothing Legislature of 1854 and 

1855- 

The great danger to our Republic, and per- 
haps the greatest danger which many see, is the 
concentration of population in the great cities 
of the Union. 

At the close of the war of the Revolution not 
more than three per cent, of our population 
lived in the cities. To-day twenty per cent, of 
our people are in the cities. The problem is to 
govern them wisely. 

The pessimists see nothing but the inevitable 

118 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



destruction of our government from the masses 
in our cities. 

Many men, with more property than judg- 
ment, want the poorer citizens disfranchised 
and the suffrage limited. This can never be 
done. If it could, it would not remedy the evil. 
Revolutions do not move backwards. The 
State of Rhode Island has a property quali- 
fication for voters, yet it is notorious that in 
her elections she is one of the most corrupt 
States in the Union. Governors and senators 
have shamelessly bought their elections. No, 
fellow-citizens, there must be no disfranchise- 
ment. Trust the people. Corruption has not 
vitiated the masses. It has poisoned our legis- 
lative bodies to some extent: we must begin 
our reforms there. 

Carefully examine all assessments of taxes; 
critically scrutinize all expenditures of the pub- 
lic moneys, and rigidly investigate all charges 
of malfeasance in public office; visit all persons 
found guilty of dishonesty with the severest 
penalties, and render them forever incapable of 
holding positions of public trust; and let the 
quality of our condemnation be not strained, 
but be visited "upon him that gives as well as 
him that takes." Hold to this course stead- 
fastly, and you will strike at the root of the 
evil in the government of our great cities. 



119 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



The people are rightly inclined, and mean to 
vote for honest and competent men. The ten- 
dency in our cities for twenty years, on the part 
of our men of culture and wealth, has been to 
place themselves beyond the people. Our pub- 
lic men and writers on public matters are con- 
tinually firing over their heads, and addressing 
some constituency which has no existence except 
in their own imaginations. 

The people in cities are, like the people every- 
where, human, and very human; and, to use 
Mr. Lincoln's words, if we hope to govern 
them wisely, "we must keep near to the common 
people." Power being in the people, that they 
may use it discreetly, our first duty is to pro- 
vide proper education. A distinguished his- 
torian has said: "We have two educations, — 
one from teachers, the other we give ourselves." 
The last is the principal education of the masses. 
They acquire it by contact with the world, take 
much of it in, as it were, through the pores. 
Is it not important, then, that men claiming to 
be educated should be able to impart to the 
people information upon subjects vitally affect- 
ing their well-being, as well as the interests of 
the whole community? The younger genera- 
tion should be especially educated in American 
history. 

Frederick the Great said to his son's tutor, 



1 20 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



"Not too much of the classics, but thoroughly 
educate in the history of European nations for 
the last one hundred years." 

Yet book learning is not everything. Ask the 
judges of our courts, who in their turn hold the 
criminal terms, Who are the criminals, — the 
immigrants of the first generation, possessed of 
little book learning? — and they will answer: 
No, the generation born upon the soil, having 
had the advantages, to a certain extent, of 
our public schools. It is not my province to 
criticise: I call attention to results. But can 
any thinking man hope to maintain a govern- 
ment dependent upon the votes of the people, if, 
in the system of education, the youth receives 
no moral training? I believe, with Thomas a 
Kempis, "It is better to feel compunction than 
know the definition thereof." 

Fellow-citizens, I have endeavored to call 
attention to the remarkable growth of our 
country, to the strength and weakness of our 
form of government. I think the candid critic 
will admit, after a careful survey of the history 
of the last century, that this government of the 
people has many advantages for our country 
over that of any other form in the world. We 
are now, in Massachusetts, 2,000,000 of people. 
During the last forty years a great change has 
taken place in the character of our population. 

121 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



In 1840 only 34,318 of the population were of 
foreign birth. In 1880 there were 443,402 
persons of foreign birth, and, reckoning those 
of the first and second generations born upon 
the soil, I am sure that I do not exaggerate, 
when I state that half the population of this 
State to-day does not trace its origin to Puritan 
ancestry, but are of a later emigration. One 
of our first duties is to assimilate our popula- 
tion. We live under a government where ma- 
jorities rule. This fact we must recognize. If 
any cherish the delusion that any class or body 
have an hereditary right to govern, that delu- 
sion must be abandoned. Demagogues and 
self-seekers must be ruthlessly crushed. No 
man has a right to claim recognition or public 
office for what he has achieved in some other 
land, before he became an American citizen. 
Merit, fitness, and fidelity to the Republic should 
be the test, and we cannot too severely condemn 
those who oppose men eminently qualified 
because of their race or religion. 

True statesmanship seeks the unity of the 
people of the Commonwealth. We ought not 
to feel discouraged if in our legislative bodies 
some men have been corrupted by the use of 
money, and have proved false to their oaths 
and to their trust. We do not forget that Louis 
XIV. had the courtiers of King James under 

122 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



his pay; that Lord Bacon disgraced his high 
office by accepting a bribe; that the noble 
government of England has not hesitated in 
any emergency to buy governors, parliaments, 
and provincial assemblies at wholesale. De- 
spair not: there is in our country a strong under- 
current of virtue, and a growing public senti- 
ment, that inspires us with faith that the people 
are being aroused to that proper public spirit 
which will insure the perpetuity of our insti- 
tutions. And now, fellow-citizens, on this day 
of days, let us not depart from this place with- 
out a grateful appreciation of what we owe to 
Almighty God for the blessings and benefits 
bestowed upon us; and, when we reflect that 
throughout this great country fifty-five millions 
of people are rejoicing with us for the peace, 
prosperity, and happiness which they enjoy, 
there should come to us a solemn reminder of 
the duties which have devolved upon us as 
citizens of the Republic. "I have an ambition," 
says Lord Chatham: "it is the ambition of de- 
livering to my posterity those rights of freedom 
which I have inherited from my ancestors." 
Such an ambition should be ours. We can 
never pay the debt we owe to the generations 
that have preceded us, but the generations to 
come will hold us responsible for the sacred 
trust delegated to our keeping. If we desire 

123 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



to honor the memory of those men who in the 
first epoch won the great charter, and made 
possible the next great epoch of the Declaration 
of Independence, let us cherish self-government, 
remembering that self-government politically 
depends upon self-government personally. Let 
us recall to-day, with grateful hearts, the 
memories of the soldiers and statesmen of the 
Revolution, who perilled so much for the idea 
which this day commemorates; nor should we 
be unmindful of the country of Lafayette, De 
Grasse, and Rochambeau, that came so gener- 
ously to our assistance and made our victory 
certain. 

And, while to-day we cherish the memory of 
the men of the Revolution, we will not forget 
those heroes of the second war for the Union. 
We rejoice that human bondage no longer exists 
in all our territory; and, now that the Civil War 
is long over, we forget all that is gloomy and 
terrible in our history, for we are assured that, 
in the sympathy that we feel for the commander 
of the Union armies in his great affliction, the 
sorrow is as genuine on the southern as on the 
northern side of the Potomac, and we realize 
once more that we are Americans all. So long 
as we cherish and honor the names of Wash- 
ington, Adams, Jefferson, and Lincoln, and the 
principles which their lives exemplified, the 

124 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



American Union is secure, and there will arise 
from the hearthstones of a grateful, happy 
people, on each succeeding Fourth day of July, 
at the rising of the sun and the going down 
thereof, an earnest, heart-felt prayer of thanks- 
giving and praise, and far above the sounds of 
other rejoicings, the ringing of bells and the 
booming of cannon, will be heard the fervent 
exclamations: God preserve to us the heritage of 
the fathers! God save the American Union! 



125 



EULOGY 

DELIVERED AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICES HELD IN 
HONOR OF THE LATE WILLIAM GASTON, EX- 
GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MAS- 
SACHUSETTS, AT THE DUDLEY STREET OPERA 
HOUSE, JUNE 13, 1894. 

At the opening of this year we said the last 
prayer and sang the last requiem over all that 
was mortal of our honored and illustrious 
citizen, William Gaston. 

After hearing, as you have, the story of his 
life, told so tenderly and so eloquently by all 
that have spoken of him, how can I hope to 
add anything to what has been said so well? 
and, as I appear here to-day to answer your 
summons, I feel abashed as I stand before you, 
for I know that only your sympathy and love 
for the lamented dead give you patience to 
listen to my repetition of the story of his life. 
I could wish that some elder brother of the bar 
had been chosen to speak of Mr. Gaston as he 
knew him through his life of more than three- 
score years and ten, or that I possessed that 
indefinable secret power which we call elo- 
quence that magnetizes men's minds and touches 

126 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



men's hearts as did the lyre of Orpheus of old. 
The custom of honoring men who have dis- 
tinguished themselves in life by solemn ob- 
servance is natural, wise, and just. Yet these 
tributes which we offer to departed worth are 
not for the dead, but for the living. We can 
add nothing to the peace and joy of the good 
man who has finished his course on earth and 
passed into a blessed immortality. Yet ex- 
pressions and memorials elevate those from 
whom they emanate; they cause us to pause in 
our struggle for wealth and honors, and lift 
us to a higher world of thought. If all the sur- 
roundings here, the religious exercises, the sol- 
emn strains of the music, the communion of 
thought between those who knew the noble- 
ness of our friend's life, shall plant the seed of a 
deep emotion that will fructify and ripen into 
noble actions, then we may congratulate our- 
selves upon a well-spent day. 

It is peculiarly fitting that these exercises 
should be held in the Roxbury District of 
Boston; and I am not unmindful of the diffi- 
culties of my task when I attempt to speak to 
you, his earliest neighbors and his latest 
friends, — you who knew him in his young life, 
you who saw his humble beginning and who 
followed him with tenderness, affection, and 
pride to its very close, sympathizing with his 

127 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



every effort, sharing with him his sorrows and 
disappointments, and rejoicing when success 
and honors crowned his career. Carlyle tells 
us that the life of the humblest individual is 
interesting and instructive. How much more so 
the life of one who has achieved fame and honor! 
We are interested in every inquiry that con- 
cerns his personality. How interesting is that 
brief letter of Cicero in which he described how 
Caesar dined with him, how "he ate and drank 
without reserve, sumptuously indeed and with 
due preparation"; and not only that, "but 
with good conversation, well digested and sea- 
soned, and if you ask cheerfully"; how the 
guest was not one to whom you would say, 
"Pray come to me in the same manner when 
you return," that "once was enough"; how 
"there was nothing of importance in their 
conversation, but a great deal of liberal learn- 
ing"; how "in short he was highly pleased and 
enjoyed himself." How much there is re- 
vealed to us in this letter of the greatest orator 
and the most renowned general of the ancient 
Romans! So we desire to know something 
more of those who become distinguished than 
the mere fact that they existed. We want to 
know something of their inner personality, to 
know if they shared with us the joys and sor- 
rows of our common humanity. We want to 

128 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



learn something of their origin and ancestry, to 
see what traits, if any, they have inherited and 
preserved. 

The Gaston family may be traced to France, 
where Jean Gaston was born about the year 
1600. He was a Huguenot, and is said to have 
been banished from France on account of his 
religion. His property was confiscated, and we 
find him in Scotland, where he was supported 
by remittances from his brothers and family in 
France, who were stanch Catholics. As he 
was unmarried when he went to Scotland, he 
probably married a Scotch woman, as we find 
his sons John, William, and x\lexander living 
in Scotland, from which they fled on account 
of religious persecution to the north of Ireland 
some time between the years 1622 and 1668. 
John Gaston, the grandson of the French 
Huguenot, had three sons born in Ireland, 
— William, born about 1680 at Caranleigh, 
Cloughwater, where he lived all his days, and 
died in the year 1770; the other two sons, 
Alexander and John, came to America. Thus 
we see one generation of the Gaston family 
was born in Ireland. John Gaston, the great- 
grandfather of Governor Gaston, came from 
Ireland to America and settled in New England, 
joining the Separatists' colony in Connecticut, 
and was a freeman of Voluntown at the or- 



129 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



ganization of the town in 1736 and 1737. Tra- 
dition states that the Gastons originally landed 
at Marblehead, Massachusetts. Alexander Gas- 
ton, father of William Gaston, married Olive 
Dunlap, of Plainfield, and, as his second wife, 
Kezia Arnold, of Burrillville, Rhode Island. 
They lived at Killingly, Connecticut, where 
William Gaston, whose memory we meet to 
honor, was born, of the second marriage, 
October 3, 1820. It was an eventful year in 
the history of the United States. It was the 
year of the great contest and the first im- 
portant debate after the adoption of the Fed- 
eral Constitution, when Missouri applied for 
admission to the Union, and thus was begun 
that tumultuous agitation on the slavery ques- 
tion culminating forty-one years later in the 
greatest civil war of modern times, — a war 
which threatened the destruction of our gov- 
ernment, lasting four years, resulting in the 
triumph of the Union armies and the emanci- 
pation of four millions of slaves. 

In Mr. Gaston's ancestry were joined the 
characteristics of the French Huguenot, the 
Irish patriot of the north of Ireland, the "May- 
flower" Pilgrims, and the followers of Roger 
Williams. We are not surprised, therefore, to 
find in William Gaston the characteristics of 
a strong man. The crest of the Gaston family, 

130 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



as given by Fairbairn, is the owl, the bird of 
wisdom. 



William Gaston gave early promise, and dis- 
played the qualities which so distinguished 
him in after-life. Those who knew him in 
boyhood speak of him as a studious lad, eager 
to acquire knowledge, yet active in the out- 
door sports so enjoyed by boys of strong 
and vigorous constitutions. He attended the 
academy at Brooklyn, Connecticut, and fitted 
for college at Plainfield Academy, and at the 
age of fifteen entered Brown University. It 
may be that his mother, being a Rhode Island 
woman and a follower of Roger Williams, had 
her way, as most mothers do, in directing the 
course of her son's, education. His classmates 
recall his modesty, his reserved manner and 
quiet dignity. A member of the Suffolk bar 
told me with much feeling of the kindness of the 
reception given him when he entered Brown as 
a Freshman. Mr. Gaston being then in the 
Junior Class, said he, was a most lovable boy, 
with a noble and manly nature. Always studi- 
ous, from childhood he pursued his studies 
with earnestness and zest. Contact with his 
fellows stimulated his ambition and gave him 
confidence in his own ability to enter the battle 

131 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of life and contest for place and honor. Young 
Gaston maintained a high rank in college and 
graduated with honors in the class of 1840. . . . 
After his graduation the young student left 
the peaceful atmosphere of his Alma Mater, and 
sought the advantages which Boston then offered 
to a student of the law, first entering the office 
of Judge Francis Hillard, of Roxbury, and con- 
tinuing and completing his studies under Ben- 
jamin R. Curtis, who was afterwards elevated 
to the bench of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and who dissented from the opinion of 
the court in the famous Dred Scott decision. 
After four years of patient and diligent study 
young Gaston was admitted to the bar in 1844, 
and in this Roxbury District in 1846 he opened 
his office for the practice of his profession. 
There was something about him that attracted 
men to him. One of the members of the Nor- 
folk County bar, a lifelong friend of his, told 
me of his first appearance in court, — somewhat 
shy; though always neat in apparel, indifferent 
to fashion; so thoroughly absorbed was he in 
his work that personal adornment gave him 
very little concern. In his first case he was 
pitted against one of the leaders of the bar, and 
many feared for the black-haired boy, as they 
termed him; but he had prepared himself so 
thoroughly and fought for his client with so 

132 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



much earnestness that his success was assured, 
and he soon took his place as one of the leaders 
of the bar in Norfolk County. ... As his reputa- 
tion increased, he sought the wider field offered 
him at the Suffolk County bar, and very soon 
was in the front rank of the profession. 

Mr. Gaston had the elements in him that 
command success at the bar, — tact, talent, 
magnetism, earnestness, integrity, and untir- 
ing industry. Of all positions in life, the lawyer, 
and especially the advocate, has the least op- 
portunity to pass for more than his worth 
merits; he has constantly the search-light 
of criticism turned fully upon him, and oppos- 
ing counsel is searching with microscopic eye 
for any flaw or defects in his pleadings or 
in his argument. The court will detect any 
sophistry or fallacy, and the jurors and spec- 
tators, with their sound common sense, gen- 
erally form a correct estimate of a man's worth; 
and in their judgments I have a strong, abid- 
ing faith, notwithstanding the sneers and criti- 
cisms of those who, by the accident of birth 
or fortune, fill positions which they think en- 
title them to be called the better class. One 
who can stand such tests must be a man of 
extraordinary ability, and only unremitting 
toil and constant study will enable him to 
hold a prominent place. He must be alert, 

133 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



prepared to meet every onset of his opponent, 
and to respond at a moment's notice; and often 
at the end of a long trial in which body and 
mind are subjected to the severest strain, 
without time for thought, when the last word 
of the evidence is spoken, begin his closing 
argument for his client. During his career 
at the bar Mr. Gaston was in many important 
cases, and met as antagonists all the leaders of 
the bar of his time. . . . His forte was in the trial 
of causes before juries, and there he was at his 
best. With an active and acute mind he was 
one of the best cross-examiners at the bar, — 
formidable when for the defence, and almost 
invincible when he was for the plaintiff and 
had the closing argument; always impressive 
and earnest, rising at times to a high pitch of 
eloquence. Mr. Gaston was very reluctant to 
enter upon the trial of a case. He hesitated 
and gave those who did not know him the im- 
pression that he was timid; yet when he began 
the trial of a cause, being in it, the opposing 
counsel might well beware, for he found in 
him an antagonist worthy of his steel, fertile 
in resources, full of enthusiasm, making his 
client's cause his own, and so thoroughly im- 
bued that he firmly believed that there was only 
one side to the case, resenting any reflection 
upon his client as a personal matter. This 

i34 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



thorough belief in the honesty of his case and 
his great earnestness was one of his most marked 
characteristics, and one to which he was in no 
small measure indebted for his success. 

I am aware that some critics have said he 
was not a great lawyer. So said the contem- 
poraries of Erskine, and they said of Choate 
that he was a mere rhetorician. We do not claim 
that he was a book-worm, or that he was versed 
in what is called the red-letter literature of 
the law. I do claim that he was a sound 
thinker, that he had developed the keen prac- 
tical instincts and sober appreciation of the 
realities of life that come to men by experience 
and contact with the world. We know that 
every man has his limitations, and I have 
thought that some of the men who criticised 
Mr. Gaston had so loaded their brains with 
precedents and other men's ideas as to leave 
them little, if any, power remaining for orig- 
inal thinking. That he was a lawyer of signal 
ability is proven by the records of the courts, 
where in his day he met every leading lawyer 
of his time and scored his full measure of 
victories. And I think it can be justly said 
of him there were few, very few, men his equal 
as an advocate in the Commonwealth during 
his years of active practice. The younger 
members of the bar had for him a genuine ad- 



135 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



miration and a special regard. They not only 
admired him, but they loved him for his uni- 
form courtesy and kindness to them. He was 
always approachable and ready to give his 
advice and offer his services to a younger 
brother at the bar, often asking and receiving 
no other fee or reward than the grateful appre- 
ciation of his debtor. All his brethren of the 
bar who knew him testify to his spotless in- 
tegrity, the absolute purity of his life, to his 
great wisdom, his unremitting labor, and his 
abundant kindness and courtesy, He has been 
commended by his associates to the younger 
men of the bar who are coming to the front, 
for the absolute fidelity to duty which marked 
his career as a lawyer. But the fame of Mr. 
Gaston is not limited by his triumphs at the 
bar; his fellow-citizens, early recognizing his 
abilities, called him to many positions of public 
trust and honor. He was chosen city solicitor 
of Roxbury, filling that important office to the 
satisfaction of the citizens for a term of five 
years, when he was elected by the people of 
Roxbury to serve in the Massachusetts Legis- 
lature in 1853, — by the Whig party. 

Mr. Gaston was never an office-seeker, yet 
he believed it to be his duty to respond to the 
call of his fellow-citizens, and this he did from 
the highest and purest motives, sacrificing his 



136 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



private interests for the common weal. He was 
re-elected to the Legislature by his party in the 
year 1854, but in 1855 and 1856 came that 
outbreak of fanaticism promulgated by secret, 
oath-bound organizations, of which the pres- 
ent A. P. A. movement is a feeble imitation. 
Mr. Gaston during that trying time proved 
himself an American of Americans. The dis- 
turbers of the public peace and the enemies of 
the American Union, whether wearing the dis- 
guise of native Americans or masquerading as 
Know-nothings or A. P. A.'s, found in him at 
all times an outspoken, relentless, and deter- 
mined opponent. The time-servers and the 
trimming politicians joined the new pro- 
scriptive party. Not so with Mr. Gaston: 
his voice rang out a clear bugle-note in defence 
of the rights of all citizens under the law, and 
he took a manly stand, proclaiming the con- 
stitutional rights of all men to absolute free- 
dom of religion. The weak men, the drift- 
wood, floated with the current: it required a 
strong man to breast the tide of bigotry and 
intolerance during that era of fanaticism. In 
the emergency Mr. Gaston proved true to the 
cardinal principles of our government, faith- 
ful, among the few leaders, to the great charter 
of American liberty. The citizens of Roxbury 
recognized the wisdom of the words of Burke, 

137 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



— that, "when bad men combine, the good 
must associate, else they will fall one by one, 
an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." 
And, to their lasting credit, a combination of 
conscientious men of the Whig and Democratic 
parties triumphantly re-elected Mr. Gaston 
to the Legislature in 1856, in opposition to the 
Know-nothing candidate. Adopted citizens 
and the sons of adopted citizens cannot too 
highly honor his memory for his noble and 
patriotic stand and his manly defence of their 
just rights and religious liberties during those 
gloomy times. It requires courage* to advocate 
an unpopular cause, even though it be the 
cause of justice and of truth. 

"Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her 
wretched crust, 

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosper- 
ous to be just; 

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward 
stands aside, 

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified." 

He fought manfully in the Legislature against 
all the obnoxious measures proposed to abridge 
the rights of citizens of any class or creed, and 
received at the close of the session the warm 
approval of his constituents. Modestly retir- 
ing to his profession, his fellow-citizens of Rox- 

138 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



bury called upon him during those eventful 
years of 1861 and 1862 to preside as chief 
magistrate of the city of Roxbury. Slavery, 
which had been threatening the peace and 
security of the nation since that great debate 
in 1820 over the admission of the State of Mis- 
souri to the Union, now threw down the gage 
of battle, and the whole country was startled 
from its fancied security by the firing upon Fort 
Sumter in April, 1861, by the men of South 
Carolina. In that hour men forgot all party 
lines, remembered only that the supremacy of 
the government was threatened. Mr. Gaston, 
true to his instincts and convictions, was en- 
thusiastically patriotic. His voice and his in- 
fluence were exerted; he was earnest and active 
in raising volunteers for the Union army. 

In 1862, having been re-elected mayor, he 
addressed the City Council of Roxbury in these 
words, which glowed with patriotic fervor: 
"The year which is before us must be produc- 
tive of events of great national importance, the 
consequences of which must visit us all. We 
have been aroused from the deep and tranquil 
slumbers of peace to the roar and tumult of 
arms. We are in the midst of a struggle in- 
volving national life, and also involving the 
hopes and destinies of more than thirty mill- 
ions of people. On the issue of this struggle 

139 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



depend the highest temporal interests of us all. 
Beyond a confiding faith in the ultimate suc- 
cess of our cause, we have nothing to guide us 
but uncertain speculations. A week, a day, 
an hour, of the future is impenetrable. Here 
human wisdom finds itself at fault, here no ray 
of light shines upon the darkness of human 
comprehension. It is therefore eminently 
proper for us, as a Christian people who have 
so long enjoyed the richest benefactions of 
God, bowing now submissively to his will, 
to invoke his blessings upon our efforts to sus- 
tain a government upon the continuance of 
which our temporal hopes so largely depend. 
The duties of every citizen are now a hundred- 
fold greater than in times of peace. Patriotism 
can now find no excuse in lethargy or in inac- 
tion. A man, to be worth anything, must be 
awake, decided, and energetic. He who slum- 
bers had better be dead. He who doubts 
had better be a traitor, for open treason is 
better than dead patriotism. The courage 
which rises with every obstacle is the courage 
which prevails. There may be days of dark- 
ness before us, but beyond those days of dark- 
ness must be days of light, and, seeing glimpses 
of the light which is beyond the clouds, let us 
labor, hope, and persevere." What a sublime 
faith was his! While he thus cherished this 



140 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



profound faith in our government of the people, 
he never flattered the groundlings nor pandered 
to their passions. 

He was absolutely fearless in the discharge 
of his public duties. Recognizing to the fullest 
extent the responsibility of his public trust and 
his duty to the people at home, Mr. Gaston felt 
he owed a duty to the citizen soldiers of Rox- 
bury in the army, the flower of our youth who 
went forth in 1861 and 1862 to fight in the war 
for the preservation of the Union. He jour- 
neyed several times to the front, visiting the 
camps, the battlefields, and the hospitals, in 
his tender solicitude for the welfare of Roxbury's 
quota. Nor did his kindness and conscien- 
tiousness stop here. He felt it a duty to look 
to the welfare of the families of these citizen 
soldiers, and he brought home from the seat 
of war words of comfort and joy to the mothers, 
wives, sisters, and daughters who were obliged 
to endure so silently and patiently during those 
years of terrible civil war, suffering as only 
women can suffer for those whom they love 
and honor, and in comparison to whose love 
all the love of man is as dry and hard as the 
remainder biscuit. He received their grateful 
thanks and earnest prayers, and the women of 
Roxbury still cherish his memory with tender 
affection. 



141 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



It is related of Mr. Gaston by one of his 
oldest friends, who was associated with him in 
the Roxbury government during the war, that 
on one occasion he went with Mr. Gaston to the 
seat of war to look out for the comfort of the 
Roxbury soldiers in the hospitals. Mr. Gas- 
ton had a pass from Surgeon-General Ham- 
mond, of the United States army, permitting 
him to visit all hospitals. They came one 
morning, after one of the great battles, to one 
of the hospitals where there was a number of 
Roxbury soldiers. Mayor Gaston politely in- 
formed the sentinel that he had a pass to enter. 
The sentinel rudely replied that he did not care 
if he had, that he could not enter, and ordered 
him to move on. The surgeon in charge came 
out, and in a still more peremptory manner 
ordered him off, and threatened him with ar- 
rest; but Mr. Gaston firmly held his ground, 
and said to the surgeon, "I have a pass here 
from the Surgeon-General of the United States 
army, authorizing me to visit all the hospitals 
of the army, and, unless your authority is su- 
perior to his, I intend to enter this hospital." 
The surgeon quailed before his firmness and 
determination, allowed him to enter, and was 
profuse in his apologies and assiduous in his 
attentions. I think this illustrates a strong 
trait in Mr. Gaston's character. He fully 



142 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



recognized the doctrine of authority, but, when 
he knew he was right, and had authority on his 
side, no power on earth could swerve him from 
the performance of duty. Through all the 
vicissitudes of the war he never faltered in his 
devotion to his country or to the Union. In 
the darkest hours he had an abiding faith in 
the ultimate triumph of our cause. Dire dis- 
aster in the field did not shake him. He was as 

"constant as the northern star, 
Of whose true-fix 'd and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament." 

At the close of his term of office as mayor 
of Roxbury, Mr. Gaston returned to his law 
office and was engrossed in the practice of his 
profession until 1868, when he was elected to 
the State Senate of Massachusetts, where he 
was a conspicuous leader on the Democratic 
side; but his mind was so eminently fair that 
he arose above party upon any measure that he 
believed was for the benefit of all the people of 
the Commonwealth. When the union of Rox- 
bury and Boston was contemplated, he was one 
of the commissioners appointed by the City 
Council of Roxbury and Boston, respectively, 
on the union of the two cities, and earnestly 
recommended the immediate consummation of 
the proposed union. The same qualities that 

H3 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



endeared Mr. Gaston to the people of Roxbury, 
his adaptation for the management of public 
affairs and his sterling integrity, soon attracted 
the attention of the voters of the enlarged 
municipality, and he was called to the mayor- 
alty of Boston in the year 1871. 



At the expiration of his term of office he was 
commended by the press and people as a man 
"pre-eminently qualified for the duties of the 
office, which required wisdom, discretion, firm- 
ness, and courage when needed, combined with 
the most exalted integrity and unselfish de- 
votion to the honor, welfare, and prosperity 
of the city." 

Mr. Gaston was permitted to remain in 
private life but a brief period. Massachusetts, 
which prior to 1874 had elected a Republican 
governor ever since the foundation of the party > 
— a party organized for the protection of the 
rights and the personal liberty of all citizens, 
— found itself agitated upon the question of the 
personal liberty of the citizen on the question 
of temperance, or, more strictly speaking, 
total abstinence, as enforced by prohibition. 
We all know that law has not an atom of 
strength unless it has an enlightened public 
opinion behind it to sustain it. Local public 

144 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



opinion in many places refused to enforce or 
sustain this prohibitory law, and the State 
Legislature thought it was stronger than public 
opinion, and created a State police force far 
removed from the people to enforce this ob- 
noxious law. The people of Massachusetts, 
a State where the town-meeting originated, 
strongly favor local self-government. They 
will bear oppression for a time, but sooner or 
later there comes a reaction. The Republican 
party in the State experienced such a reaction 
in the autumn of 1874. The State constabu- 
lary became odious to the people, it was a force 
too far removed from the people; and the re- 
volt came, and the opposition selected Mr. 
Gaston as their candidate for governor, to lead 
in the campaign against centralized govern- 
ment as exemplified in a police too far re- 
moved from the control of the local authorities. 
Upon that issue Mr. Gaston was triumphantly 
elected governor for the year 1875. I say upon 
that issue, for I believe, if it were not for the 
existence of the State police, no Democrat could 
have been elected; and for the first time since 
the birth of the Republican party a Democratic 
governor sat in the chair of the chief executive 
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. His 
instincts and training were in favor of govern- 
ment by the people. He saw that the tendency 

H5 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of the Republican party was towards centraliza- 
tion of power, and he recommended to the 
Legislature the immediate repeal of the act 
creating the force known as the State constabu- 
lary, — a measure which the Legislature adopted. 
He no doubt realized, as most men do who think 
at all, that we gain nothing by shifting re- 
sponsibility from cities and towns to the State. 
We only aggravate the evil by placing the 
remedy for corruption and bad administration 
too far away from us. We must feel the effects 
of bad government. So soon as we realize 
that men of brains and influence, with great 
interests, cannot neglect their most important 
duty and cannot remain silent or indifferent 
in municipal affairs, we shall have taken the 
first great step towards remedying many of 
the evils which exist in cities to-day, and pre- 
vent many of the dangers threatening the exist- 
ence of our republican form of government. 
Mr. Gaston also urged in his message the repeal 
of the prohibitory law and the substitution 
of a judicious license system. That recommen- 
dation was favorably received, and a license 
law was enacted by the Legislature of 1875, 
and still remains the policy of the Common- 
wealth. The wisdom of his recommendation 
was shown by the vote of the people, a few years 
since, on the prohibition constitutional amend- 



146 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



ment, the people sustaining the license policy 
by almost fifty thousand majority. 



Mr. Gaston's position as governor was novel 
and trying. He was the first Democratic gov- 
ernor for many years, and the executive council 
and both branches of the Legislature were op- 
posed to him politically; yet all conceded at the 
expiration of his term of office that in the ad- 
ministration of his public trust he acted for the 
good of all the people, he brought to the dis- 
charge of his public duties the lofty convictions 
expressed by a great writer upon the law, that 
"the same rules of morality which hold to- 
gether families and which form families into 
commonwealths link together those common- 
wealths as members of the great society of 
mankind." No law ever received his approval 
that he did not believe conformed to the high 
standard of morality which he set for himself, 
and he carefully scrutinized every grant of 
public moneys, that individuals or corporations 
should not be favored at the expense of the 
public treasury. When he retired from office, 
he had the supreme satisfaction of knowing that 
his course was commended by the people with- 
out distinction of party, and that he carried 
with him into private life their undiminished 

H7 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



love and respect. As he had, on assuming the 
office of governor, absolutely relinquished his 
practice as a lawyer and given himself unre- 
servedly to the duties of his office, when he 
retired from the executive chair he had neither 
a case nor a client, and once more resumed his 
professional work. Many men are only con- 
spicuous when in public office, but Mr. Gaston 
needed no office nor title to give him reputation 
or fame. During the years of his retirement 
from public office he became again a leader 
at the bar and a prominent figure and potent 
factor in the life of this community, answering 
from time to time the call of his fellow-citizens 
on important occasions. 

Mr. Gaston was fond of good literature. His 
favorite authors were Burke and Walter Scott. 
He was an earnest and industrious student of 
that great statesman and philosopher, Burke, 
for whom he had a profound admiration, and 
who, he told me, was most helpful to him in 
guiding and directing him in public affairs. 
There was a trait in which he resembled Burke: 
he had "that chastity of honor that felt a 
stain like a wound." He was one of the most 
sensitive men that I ever met: he felt keenly 
every unjust expression, yet was thankful for 
honest criticism and deeply grateful for kindly 
appreciation. I think the degrees of doctor of 



148 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



law conferred on him by Brown and Harvard 
Universities gave him more pleasure and satisfac- 
tion than all the political honors that ever came 
to him. Some of his associates at the bar have 
thought that he was not a social man. I think 
he was misunderstood. He was a shy, retir- 
ing character, who did not court publicity, 
but those who knew him in his early days in 
Roxbury, and in the intimacy of his private 
life, speak of him as a most agreeable and 
a lovable man. Domestic in his nature, he 
loved his home and idolized his family. I 
should be presuming too much, did I invade 
the sacred precincts of that home, yet I can- 
not refrain from speaking of the depth and in- 
tensity of his affection for the loved of his house- 
hold. We know that there was nothing in his 
life that might not have been seen of all men. 
He was the soul of truth and honor. We know 
that 

"Whatever record leaps to light, 
He never would be shamed." 

He has passed from our mortal ken, but the 
influence of his life and example lives after 
him. The world is better for the part he took 
in it. His life is a shining example for the 
youth of our country. We remember his ster- 
ling integrity, his earnestness which often kin- 

149 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



died into burning eloquence, — a trait which 
came to him from his Celtic blood, — his great 
kindliness of heart, his fidelity to his friends, 
his respect for authority, and his faithfulness 
to every trust, public and private. I wish 
there were vouchsafed to me that almost 
divine gift of speech, that I might fittingly 
eulogize our friend, that I could portray as they 
deserve his qualities as citizen, lawyer, orator, 
and statesman. I can only ask you to accept 
my poor effort as an earnest of what I would 
wish to say. Can I not truthfully say of him, 
as he said of Dr. Howe in his eulogy? "Besides 
great ability, there are two things which make 
men strong, — an intelligent conscience and the 
courage to obey it. True courage is not noisy, 
does not consist in defiant manner or vaporing 
speech. It does consist in a quiet determina- 
tion to do right because it is right, in travelling 
a straight, though frequently unpopular, path- 
way. It is easy to float with the current, but 
to breast it requires both strength and bold- 
ness." 

I know the cynical man may ask, Do you 
claim for him great perfection? No; and, were 
he living, he would be the first to rebuke me, 
did I make such a claim in his presence. I 
know he would say, "Speak of me as I am: 
nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in 

150 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



malice." When we look upon a diamond, turn- 
ing the light upon its many faces, we do not 
search with microscopic eye to discover flaws 
and imperfections. We are satisfied with the 
jewel as it is. We know William Gaston was 
human, and we loved him because he was 
human, and made a brave and manly fight for 
the right as he understood it. He walked in 
and out amongst us for half a century, so true, 
so courageous, so tender, — a man of absolute 
rectitude, whose whole life was an open book. 
He passed away into immortality from that 
home which was his sanctuary, and in which 
he was so fondly loved, as peacefully and calmly 
as if in a pleasant dream. "Death bringeth 
good fame," says Bacon. If a good life, a 
noble purpose and exalted patriotism, and fidel- 
ity to duty deserve good fame, then, so long 
as the citizens of Massachusetts shall honor 
such qualities and endeavor to emulate such 
virtues, the fame of William Gaston will be 
secure. 



151 



ADDRESS PRESENTING THE CITY OF 
BOSTON THE O'REILLY MONUMENT, 
JUNE 20, 1896. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The large audience assembled here who have 
rested from their ordinary labors, their faces 
aglow with love and sympathy, attest and 
proclaim by their presence that John Boyle 
O'Reilly did not wholly die, — that you still 
cherish his memory and that he holds an affec- 
tionate place in your hearts. Recalling those 
beautiful lines of his, — 

"True singers can never die, 
The singer who lived is always alive, 
We hearken and always hear." 

It seems but yesterday since he walked the 
streets of this city which he loved so well. 
Yet nearly six years have passed since we laid 
him at rest in yonder rural cemetery. 

Eloquent voices have many times since 
spoken and sung his praises. At a great public 
meeting held in this city, shortly after his 
death, he was fittingly eulogized, and at that 
meeting it was resolved that his life and ser- 

152 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



vices should be still further commemorated, — 
that his fame should not be intrusted to the 
perishable eloquence of the day, but that he 
should still be with us in a more enduring form 
to instruct the generations when all of us shall 
be mute and most of us forgotten. 

As a result of that meeting and the subse- 
quent efforts of his friends and admirers, rep- 
resenting every walk of life, we are assembled 
to-day in this beautiful month of June to dedi- 
cate a memorial to as rare a spirit and as lov- 
ing and noble a soul as ever dwelt in the habita- 
tions of men. 

It was my good fortune and peculiar privi- 
lege to make his acquaintance almost on his 
arrival here in Boston. That acquaintance 
ripened into friendship and fructified into love. 

There were a fascination and magnetism about 
him that no genuine man could resist. His 
pleasant voice, his winsome way, his great 
kindness, his manly courage, the honesty of his 
thought, and his truthfulness of soul bound him 
to you with hooks of steel. You felt that 
through all his life he tried to make men purer, 
wiser, and better. Humboldt says, "Govern- 
ments, religion, property, books, are nothing 
but the scaffolding to build a man, and the 
finest fruit that earth holds up to its Creator 
is a finished man." 



i53 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



The great poet who has written for all man- 
kind puts these words into the mouth of the 
Prince of Denmark, when speaking of his royal 
father. He does not speak of his exalted posi- 
tion or his kingly prerogatives; he says: 

"He was a man, take him for all in all, 
I shall not look upon his like again." 

So we say, as we look upon the counterfeit 
presentment of John Boyle O'Reilly, brought 
freshly to our mind by the genius of the 
sculptor, "This was a man." 

Born in Ireland, he so loved his native land 
that he offered his mortal life as a sacrifice 
upon the altar of her liberty. Could any man 
give more? Tried and condemned by English 
law, he received prison and exile. By the in- 
trepidity of friends and the courage of Captain 
Hathaway, of a New Bedford whale-ship, he 
escaped from Australia, landed in the United 
States, and from the very day when his feet 
touched our shores he entered into the very 
life of the nation. 

Devotedly as he loved the land of his birth, 
when he became an American citizen, he was 
one in every fibre of his being. He never 
claimed recognition for anything he did or 
dared for his native land. He gave his whole 
thought, his whole mind, all his energies and 

154 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



his splendid talents for his adopted country. 
One of his expressions was, "We can do Ireland 
more good by our Americanism than by our 
Irishism." 

He was an enthusiastic advocate of every 
cause that he believed would help America and 
American institutions. As he believed in the 
dignity of manhood, so he labored for the ele- 
vation of mankind, and he was broad enough 
and catholic enough to espouse the cause of 
all whom he believed were oppressed. His 
was the truest democracy. He knew neither 
caste nor color, nor creed nor nationality, as 
he believed in the brotherhood of man. His 
great heart embraced in that brotherhood all 
humanity. What he wrote of Edmund Burke 
was true of himself: — 

"Races or sects were to him a profanity: 
Hindoo or negro and Celt were as one; 
Large as mankind was his splendid humanity, 
Large in its record the work he has done." 

We come this day to erect this memorial, 
not for the dead, but for the living, — a monu- 
ment which in its conception and design is an 
exquisite piece of sculpture worthy of the genius 
of Daniel French; a group that a recent writer 
says will be immortal, and will fittingly adorn 
this entrance to our public park. 

155 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



We believe that the feelings and memories 
here evoked will inspire us to appreciate the 
lesson which the life of Boyle O'Reilly teaches. 

I beg leave, Mr. Mayor, on behalf of the 
committee and the thousands of subscribers, to 
present this memorial to the City of Boston, 
through you, its chief magistrate, intrusting 
it to the care and protection of the municipal- 
ity. It beautifully exemplifies the life and 
attributes of O'Reilly as a man, a poet, a pa- 
triot, and a Christian. 

We offer this memorial to the City of Boston 
in the belief that it will prove a striking object- 
lesson. 

We trust that those who come here to view 
this magnificent creation of the genius of the 
sculptor will recall the life of the Irish exile, who 
came to this city without friends or influence, 
with no fortune but his talents, yet by his 
honesty of purpose, his manly courage, his 
untiring industry and indomitable perseverance, 
entered into the very heart and life of Boston, 
winning for himself the respect and admiration 
of the cultured and holding a place in the hearts 
of all. 

The life of every man or woman who has 
achieved success or fame is interesting, and 
teaches a lesson. One of the lessons that his 
life teaches us is that America is a country of 



156 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



boundless opportunities; that the freedom we 
enjoy is but an opportunity to make one's self 
a good, a true, a noble man or woman. We 
hope that all who come here will profit by the 
lesson; that the weary and oppressed will 
feel their burden lightened; that the poor whose 
friend he was may be comforted; that the 
exile will learn patience, and depart hence with 
new hope; that the young and ambitious will 
receive new inspiration from the story of his 
life; and I believe it will make us all better 
citizens, better patriots, and better men as, 
looking upon his face turned to the sunlight 
of the morning, we recall these opening lines 
from his poem on the Pilgrim Fathers: — 

"One righteous word for law — the common will. 
One living rule of faith — God regnant still." 



157 



AN ADDRESS 

MADE AT THE MEMORIAL EXERCISES HELD DEC. 20, 
I905, IN HONOR OF THE LATE PATRICK A. COLLINS 
BY THE CITY OF BOSTON. 

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

It is peculiarly fitting and appropriate that 
this memorial meeting to honor the late Mayor 
Collins should be held in Tremont Temple, for 
it was in this place and upon this platform that 
on a memorable occasion he declared that he 
was "no man's man and wore no man's collar," 
and that was the keynote of his whole char- 
acter. 

As I look about me in this gathering and see 
so many of his friends, it is difficult for me to 
realize that he will not step forward and thrill 
us as of yore. Yet we feel that, if he is not 
visibly present, his spirit hovers over us. 

The presence here of this large assemblage 
proves the strength of your love and devotion 
to the memory of Patrick A. Collins. You all 
respected and loved him. We feel that a tower 
has fallen, a star has set. While we mourn for 
him here, in thousands of homes in this land 
and in cabins on the other side of the Atlantic 

158 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



sympathetic hearts are mourning with us to- 
night. I loved him as a dear friend, a compan- 
ion and associate for almost forty years. How 
can I hope to find words to utter what our 
hearts feel? 

I desire to speak to you of him as he would 
wish me, were he living and present. I know 
he would say, "Speak of me as you know me: 
'nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in 
malice.'" I do not claim that he was perfect, 
nor shall I dwell upon his imperfections: he 
was "bound in the bonds which all men share." 
Yet, view him as we may, the lion's mark was 
always there. We loved him because he was 
a great, human, lovable man, yet what we say 
here to-day cannot avail the dead. 

We have sung his requiem: in the bright sun- 
light of an autumn day we committed his body 
to mother earth, and to many of us the world 
seems lonesome since. These tributes which we 
offer are not for the dead, but for the living. 
These expressions and memorial exercises ele- 
vate those from whom they emanate: they 
cause us to pause in our struggle for wealth and 
honors, and lift us to a higher world of thought. 
If the surroundings here, these exercises, the 
strains of music, the communion of thought 
between those who knew the usefulness and 
nobility of our friend's life, shall plant the seed 

159 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



of an emotion that will ripen and fructify into 
nobler actions, we may congratulate ourselves 
upon a well-spent day. 

What an inspiration and example for us all 
is the life of this poor Irish immigrant boy, who 
began his career so humbly in this city without 
friends, without fortune, yet by his perseverance, 
his magnetism, his tact, and his indomitable 
industry, became chief magistrate of this great 
city! It seems like a tale from "The Arabian 
Nights," as if the magician came with his lamp 
and ring and did it all; yet we know the magi- 
cian was none other than Patrick A. Collins 
himself, and his talisman, like that of every 
other man that has achieved anything in life, 
was hard, persistent work and industry. 

I first met him in the enchanting garden of 
youth, and it was there he introduced me to 
his youthful friend, John Boyle O'Reilly. As 
we left its portals with high ideals, we hoped 
to conquer success, and to make the wide world, 
whose roadway we entered, a little better. We 
found the way often rough and stony, we did 
not escape some mire, and were often wearied 
in spirit and body. His cheery voice and com- 
panionship were always encouraging, and he 
never lost faith. How well he succeeded, the 
future historian of Boston will tell. 

We are perhaps too near him fully to appre- 

160 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



ciate him or to measure him justly. In early 
life we entered the Legislature together. I re- 
member that during the session a small type 
member of the House, and of our party, made 
a trade on some matter and pledged the Demo- 
cratic vote. It was to my mind a corrupt 
measure. I invited Collins to luncheon. When 
he came into the room, he said, "I know what 
you want: you and I cannot be traded like 
sheep at the shambles by such a trickster." 
This incident gave me the first insight into his 
character. He hated shams and was incor- 
ruptibly honest, and I felt sure that the gilded 
hand of corruption would never dare to offer 
him a friendly grasp. I was in Washington 
when he was a member of Congress, and knew 
him to refuse a fee of ten thousand dollars as 
counsel in a certain case, at a time when that 
amount of money was to him a small fortune. 
Many members of the bar at that day, and 
to-day, would have thought it not improper to 
accept that fee, but he had a higher standard of 
ethics. He believed his first duty was to his 
country and his constituents. His oath of 
office was to him no idle or unmeaning ceremony, 
and he had that high sense of honor that feels 
a stain like a wound. 

He might have died rich if he had not 
refused to sully his honor, but he always 

161 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



kept his vizor up, and men who looked at 
him felt that there was something in his air 
and manner which said, "Get thee behind me, 
Satan!" 

As I sat in his office in St. Helen's Place, in 
London, one day, while he was consul-general, 
I could not help recalling Hawthorne's story 
of his consular experience. Numberless were 
the calls made upon Collins, not only by Ameri- 
cans, but by all nationalities. He listened to 
their tales of woe with patience and sympathy. 
All went away comforted, and many received 
substantial aid from the private purse of this 
great-hearted man. 

As mayor of Boston, his record is known to 
you all. On public occasions he represented 
the city with honor and dignity. He was ac- 
cessible to the humblest citizen, ready to listen 
to advice, yet always acting on his own judg- 
ment. He could say "No" with great firmness 
when necessary, and every tax-payer paying a 
dollar into the city treasury knew that he would 
guard its expenditure as strictly and economi- 
cally as any trustee or guardian of private 
funds. His messages and vetoes were models 
in their terseness and precision. He was strong 
to do the right thing because it was the right 
thing. He did his duty fearlessly, never stop- 
ping to count personal consequences. Through 



162 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



all his life he believed with Plato that "Justice 
was the health of the State." 

To briefly sum up his life and character: 
While he was thoroughly American, he pas- 
sionately loved the land of his birth; he con- 
tributed liberally from his means and gave to 
her cause all his splendid abilities; as he said 
on one occasion, "I love Ireland as I love my 
mother, and I love America as I do my wife." 
He was faithful to duty, incorruptibly honest, 
possessed magnetism, tact, and breadth of 
view, and he placed a higher value upon char- 
acter than upon success. 

He was a conscientious lawyer, a careful leg- 
islator, an efficient consul-general, and an able 
mayor. As an orator, he had the essential 
requisites, — a good voice, a noble presence, that 
indefinable temperament of the Celt that moves 
and convinces, force of character, the humor 
and pathos that called forth smiles or tears as 
he willed. He could wreathe the iron bar of 
logic with the flowers of rhetoric and carry 
conviction to the minds of his hearers because 
they believed there was an earnest man behind 
all his words. 

While many men who pose as statesmen be- 
lieve their party to be mankind, Collins had 
the faculty of lifting himself to a higher alti- 
tude, obtaining a clearer view and a broader 



163 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



horizon, and in that horizon he embraced hu- 
manity. 

He believed with the poet that — 

"Where'er a single slave doth pine, 
Where'er one man may help another, — 
Thank God for such a birthright, brother, 
That spot of earth is thine and mine: 
There is the true man's birthplace grand, 
His is a world-wide fatherland!" 

His early beginning was much like that of 
Lincoln; and as Lincoln's great speech at Get- 
tysburg, of twenty lines, has become a classic 
and will live, so Collins' short eulogy of O'Reilly 
will be the gem that will long survive his other 
utterances. 

Yet those who knew him in public life only 
did not know him at his best. It was at the 
table, surrounded by six or seven intellectual 
men, that he appeared to the best advantage, 
in the freedom of unrestrained intercourse that 
you began to know and appreciate him. His 
education was not of the kind that knows a 
little Latin and less Greek, soon forgotten in 
the tumult of busy life. His wide range of 
reading, particularly of history and biography, 
his knowledge of public men and public affairs, 
surprised you. Across the table, where every 
man could give and take, he received a sharp 

164 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



thrust without rancor and with rare good 
humor. 

Alas! he has passed from our mortal ken. 
Farewell, dear friend, never again shall we see 
your stalwart form walking the streets of this 
city which you loved so well! Never again 
shall we hear thy cheery voice or feel the warm 
grasp of thy friendly hand! 

You have passed into the dim valley and 
shadow of death; but, oh, how many fragrant 
and precious memories you have bequeathed 
to us! Such men never wholly die, for "the 
memorial of virtue is immortal," because "it 
is known with God and with men. When it is 
present, men take example at it; when it is 
gone, they desire it; it weareth a crown and 
triumpheth forever, having gotten the victory 
striving for undented rewards." 

The people of this city, who loved him so 
well, propose to erect in some public place a 
memorial more lasting than our perishable 
words. There it will stand to remind us of the 
story and fidelity to duty of this poor Irish im- 
migrant boy. 

Let those who are inclined to despair of gov- 
ernment by the people not lose hope when they 
reflect that into this great crucible of our de- 
mocracy are poured so many elements, and, 
when we separate the dross and alloy, we pro- 



165 



THOMAS J. GARGAN 



duce such refined metal and such a type of 
manhood as this monument will commemorate. 
The coming generations, as they look upon it, 
will receive new inspiration, and they will realize 
that not the acquisition of money, but the path 
of duty, is the way to honor and glory. 

Build it then of granite and of bronze: it 
cannot be more enduring than his virtues. Let 
the genius of the sculptor give it form and 
beauty: it cannot be more beautiful or nobler 
than his character. 

Yet even this monument may moulder and 
crumble into dust; but so long as we shall main- 
tain the institutions and government which 
made his career possible, and so long as we shall 
maintain the character of our civic government 
upon the high standard which he set, we secure 
and perpetuate the fame of Patrick A. Collins. 



1 66 



A POSTSCRIPT OF CORRECTION TO THE 
LIFE OF THE LATE THOMAS J. GAR- 
GAN, OF BOSTON. 

A memorial of the late Thomas J. Gargan, 
of Boston, has lately been issued for private cir- 
culation. It is by Joseph Smith, a Boston jour- 
nalist, and a friend of Mr. Gargan in his later 
years; but, while excellent in its literary form, 
it presents a number of inaccurate statements 
as to Mr. Gargan's ancestry and early life, 
which might have been avoided by recourse to 
the authoritative records which Mr. Gargan's 
blood-kindred would willingly have supplied, 
had the opportunity been granted them. As 
it is, Mr. Gargan's sisters and other relatives 
with many friends of his early days are pained 
at these manifest and needless inaccuracies. 
The kinsmen whose names are appended feel 
it their duty to indicate these. 

Take, for example, the brief record of Mr. 
Gargan's grandfather on page 16, in connection 
with the Irish " Rebellion" of 1798. It was 
Mr. Gargan's great-grandfather, not his grand- 
father, who owned not a " little estate," but a 
very large and profitable farm. Patrick Gar- 
gan, the grandfather of Thomas J. Gargan, was 
hardly seventeen years of age at the time of 
the uprising in 1798. His patriotism drew him 
into a movement which, he hoped, would bring 
good to his country; but at that age he could 
have no estate, great or small. He was not 
"defeated and captured," nor did he die "with 
the bitterness of defeat in his heart on the road- 
side, on the way to the Drogheda prison." 
Nor was there any "little child" to be "taken 
home by his brother," for the youth him- 



self was not married until 1806, his son and 
namesake being born in the following year, 
1807. 

It is further said of this second Patrick Gar- 
gan, " While yet a young man, in 1824, he 
left the land of his fathers, and emigrated to 
Boston." A young man, indeed! Even in 
those bygone days of early maturity a lad of 
seventeen was accounted a boy. 

He died in 1856, at the age of forty-nine. 
His business, in which he made a generous 
living for his family, was that of mason and 
contractor. He was a well-educated man, 
versed not only in the history of his own un- 
happy birthland, but in general history, and 
well grounded in the English classics. 

The father of Thomas J. Gargan receives, 
it has been seen, some mention, albeit incor- 
rect; but his mother is dismissed in a line: 
"He met and married Rose Garland, by whom 
he had eight children." As a matter of fact, 
there were nine children, and Mr. Gargan was 
not the first, but the second son. 

We are further told that he had nothing 
which the world calls advantages, and owed 
everything to his native ability. He was not 
born to wealth, it is true, but he was born into 
that high degree of comfort which not only his 
immediate family, but his ancestors, educated 
men and women on both sides of the house, 
had also enjoyed for generations. He had a 
mother who would have been the making of 
any man. Educated at private schools first 
in her native Carrickmacross, Ireland, then 
in Fredericton, N.B., she developed fine in- 
tellectual powers, and carried in face, figure, 
and bearing every mark of gentle lineage. 
Of her mother's near kindred were Colonel 
M'Kenna, serving in the Spanish army, and 



the O'Higginses of Chile, S.A. Her father, 
with whom she came to America, had been a 
book-keeper in Dublin. 

After her death on Feb. 6, 1900, at the 
age of eighty-seven, a sketch of her life and 
character appeared in The Pilot, to which her 
husband had subscribed from its beginning, 
and to whose editorial and business staffs the 
family were well known. We take a few 
sentences, as showing how Mrs. Gargan was 
esteemed outside of her own home: — 

Left a widow while still a young woman, Mrs. Gar- 
gan, herself possessed of a cultivated and well-stored 
mind, made it her chief care to give her children the best 
education attainable. . . . 

Detail of incident and laudation would offend the 
modest dignity of her whose long life was always that of 
a woman of the home. She was herself of that depth of 
nature which does not wreak itself in ardent expression, 
but whose earnest and guarded utterances stand for 
truth and reality. Her recreation was in good reading, 
history and poetry being her favorites. Blessed with a 
marvellous memory, she would, until her latest day, 
recite with fire and feeling long passages from the great 
poets of English speech. She followed public events 
with keen interest and understanding. 

Mr. Gargan took his most marked intel- 
lectual traits from his mother. Of the home 
advantages which this splendid mother gave 
him, he was justly proud to speak; and at the 
memorial meeting of the Charitable Irish So- 
ciety following his death his law partner for 
many years, Mr. P. M. Keating, recounted these 
as being, in addition to Mr. Gargan's natural 
abilities, the secrets of his success. We quote: 

He enjoyed other advantages because of the environ- 
ment in which he grew to manhood. ... In the home of 
his boyhood those principles were carefully cultivated 
which constitute the groundwork of upright character, 
and there the foundation of his subsequent career was 



securely laid. It was the practice among the members 
of his family to read the best authors and converse about 
them, and to discuss important topics of the day. Thus 
there was stimulated in Mr. Gargan a desire for the 
acquisition of knowledge which animated him through- 
out his life. Hence we are not surprised to find that he 
was familiar with the works of Edmund Burke, Lecky, 
the historian, and of other eminent writers of history and 
literature, and when, at the age of sixteen years, he left 
school, he was better equipped than the average youth of 
his time for the tasks that he was called upon to per- 
form. 

Mr. Keating had these reminiscences straight 
from Mr. Gargan, as had his younger kins- 
folk and his friends his frequent expressions of 
admiration for his mother, and his fondness 
for repeating Rudyard Kipling's little poem, 
"O Mother of Mine." 

It would really seem that at least one of the 
ephemeral newspaper notices included in the 
volume might have been omitted for a few 
words abuuc Mr. Garg.. -ii\ mother. 

Another blunder which surprises his old 
Boston friends is that which locates the home 
of his boyhood in the North End. He was born 
and brought up in the West End of Boston, 
and was until the very last years of his life 
a pew-holder and attendant at St. Joseph's 
Church in that district. He was a member of 
St. Joseph's choir also; and not a few survive 
who remember him as fellow-singer and fellow- 
worshipper. 

No one could possibly have been freer from 
the taint of snobbery than Mr. Gargan. It 
is not snobbery, however, but common justice 
to give to Mr. Gargan's parents, and more 
especially to his mother, due credit for the 
refined and comfortable home of his youth 
and the intelligent direction of his natural 

abilities - Thomas E. Burke. 

Thomas J. Gargan. 



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